Zombies and High School Kids
by Anime PJ
Summary: The zombie apocalypse has struck. All over the world people are dying, coming back and killing other people. Watch as one group of highschoolers, along with the school nurse, take on the undead in a desperate fight for survival... and grow much closer to each other in the process. Takashi/Rei Kouta/Saya(Eventually) Saeko/OC
1. All They Want to Do is Eat Our Brains

**Welcome, Constant Readers, to the first chapter of ****_Zombies and High School Kids_****! I've been back and edited this back into the first person, because after much experimenting with different writing styles, I have discovered that writing in the first person from my OC's point of view and occasionally cutting to the third person when I need to explore another character's thoughts is the way I write best. I hope you guys understand. I plan on editing all of my stories, but I chose to start with this one because I think I owe it to you guys since I made you wait so long for me to finish editing it the first time.**

**Now, for those of you who are only just joining us, this is an OC story in which I insert my own character into the story of ****_Highschool of the Dead_****. It's an OC/Saeko story. Be warned that my OC's backstory is relatively dark, and it will seem especially so when he starts recalling specific details of what happened to him. There will also be some apparent psychological affects to him, but I won't tell you about those; if you're observant enough, you should be able to pick up on them for yourself.**

**That being said, let's begin.**

* * *

All They Want to Do is Eat Our Brains

**I would have happily told anyone that I was a perfectly ordinary teenager. And by most standards, I was. I was eighteen years old, and I attended a high school called Fujimi Academy, which is a school in Japan. My name – Paul Blake – made most people believe I had moved there from overseas at a younger age, but that was not the case. I couldn't remember living anywhere ****_other _****than Japan.**

**My father had moved out there when I was only a baby, and he had apparently neglected to bring my mother … if she was even ****_alive_****. I have never met my mother, and my father never spoke of her, so where she was or even who she was, I did not know. I could never ask my father about this because, well … my father terrified me, to be quite frank. The man was in prison now, and I was ****_still _****terrified of him. About the only thing I had ever managed to glean from my father was that he once lived in England.**

**My father was the abusive type, the type who would put out a cigarette on his child's skin if the ashtray wasn't near him at the time – he had actually done so to me on at least six occasions. I took great comfort in the fact that my father was in prison. I took even ****_more _****comfort in the fact that, if my information was accurate, the son of a bitch had taken quite the beating before he was arrested. The thought of my father having the shit kicked out of him in an alleyway never failed to amuse me.**

**My school life was pleasant enough, though there were three things I could complain about. There was this girl with pink hair who seemed to think she was hot shit, and she made every attempt to show everyone just how much better than them she was. There was also a teacher – my homeroom teacher – named Shidou, whom practically everyone agreed was a straight-up asshole. The worst of them, though, the one that got to me the worst … was the girl who seemed to hate me for no real reason; she glared daggers at me if we caught each other's eyes, she shoved past me if I was close enough in the hallways, and if she ****_had _****to speak to me, it was always in the disrespectful tone of someone who feels nothing but contempt to the person they're talking to.**

**Why was this the worst of them all? Well, despite how she seemed to hate me so much … I could feel certain feelings bubble up inside me whenever I caught sight of her. For every moment she spent being hostile toward me, I felt a fresh stab of pain in my heart. The strength she had, the confident way in which she carried herself, the majestic skill with which she wielded her boken when practising for her club, her general beauty as a woman … How could I see all that and ****_not _****get a crush on her?**

**The name of this girl was Saeko Busujima.**

**So my life wasn't all that great. But as our story begins, it was about to get a whole lot worse … or maybe just that little bit better. Ladies and gentlemen, join us in witnessing the events that would lead me to transform from a scarred teenager with a bad past … to a survivor, a warrior in a world of the undead.**

**Let's start from the beginning …**

* * *

I was sitting in one of the only peaceful classes I had – peaceful and _boring_. But Maths was the only subject that Busujima-san ever seemed to skip, so it was about the only lesson we had together where I had any peace of mind. That was kind of a shame, because it was the kind of lesson in which the death glares she so often sent me would actually liven things up a bit. I didn't want to be here, so I was about to do something I had never really done before: Skip class.

I raised my hand in the air, and the Sensei stopped with his lecture.

"Yes, Blake-kun?" the Sensei asked in the boring drawl that I – and every other student in the room – had come to despise so much.

"May I go to the bathroom, Sensei?" I asked politely. I wasn't worried about being caught. I never skipped class, so the Sensei wouldn't suspect a thing.

The Sensei sighed. "Fine. Just be quick about it."

"Thank you, Sensei." I stood up and walked swiftly out of the room. I was a pale lad, my skin very nearly white. My hair was shoulder-length and a very dark shade of red. My eyes were lime green and somewhat larger than usual. I was tall and thin, but didn't exactly lack in the muscle department – after years of abuse, I was determined to be strong enough to take the next bastard who tried to attack me head-on.

A relieved smile came over my face as I left the classroom. It was damn _good _to be free of that boring-ass classroom. I walked through the corridors of the school, looking for one stairwell in particular. I found it in no time. I saw a flash of bright pink hair vanishing around a corner, realised how lucky I was that the bitch had just left, and went into the stairwell, where one of my only friends stood leaning against a wall.

Takashi Komuro, my best friend, was a pretty average looking teenager. He was tall enough, and he had spiked up black hair and brown eyes. He wore a red T-shirt over the white dress-shirt of his school uniform, which also consisted of a black blazer, trousers, and a pair of dress shoes. I wore much the same, but without the red T-shirt, and I kept my dress shirt untucked to allow for comfort.

"Hi, dude," I said in greeting.

Takashi looked up and noticed me, putting on a half-assed smile. "Hey, man," he said. "What are you doing out here? You _never _skip class."

"I was bored shitless." I shrugged. "Why do you _always _skip class?"

Takashi let out a throaty, forced chuckle. "Touché."

Things descended into silence pretty quickly from there. I wasn't surprised by this in the slightest. Takashi had recently gone through a breakup with his now ex-girlfriend, Rei Miyamoto, and she had started dating his former best friend, Hisashi Igou. Both were close friends of mine, too. Because of Takashi's bitterness over the whole ordeal, I now filled the best friend role, though I wasn't sure I knew how to be a good friend to Takashi without sounding like a condescending asshole. So I quite often found myself avoiding the subject altogether.

The two of us continued to look down upon the front courtyard of the school … and we saw something rather curious. There was a man by the school gates, and he appeared to be trying to reach in through the gaps in the metal. A group of three teachers approached him and appeared to be speaking to him – _Probably telling him to piss off, _I thought. One of the teachers, the gym teacher if I remember correctly, walked to the gate and rather aggressively pulled the man into it; the banging of man against metal could be heard even from where Takashi and I stood. And the screams of the gym teacher as the man he was holding bit into his arm were pretty damn clear, too. The gym teacher fell to the ground, his arm spouting blood, and writhed in pain. He lay, convulsing, on the floor, and after a few moments lay still.

_Holy shit … _I thought as I looked down on the scene below me. If I didn't know any better, I'd have thought this was z—

The only female teacher of the group leaned over the now-still body of the gym teacher … and then the gym teacher sat up, grabbed onto her, and bit into her neck, spreading her blood all over the floor and all over her biter. She was dragged to the ground, and the gym teacher, his flesh now greying, took bite after bite out of her skin. After swallowing a few more chunks of the unfortunate woman, the gym teacher stood up and began shambling after the only remaining teacher.

_Oh my fucking God … _I thought in shock. _Zombies … actual fucking _zombies_! This … this sort of shit just can't be happening, can it? _I wasn't normally one for freezing up in shock, but this … this was _insane_.

"… I've gotta go get Rei …" I heard Takashi mutter. I found it equal parts sweet and stupid that Takashi was so worried about a girl who had practically ripped his heart from his chest. But then again, I had an inkling of worry in the back of my mind for Busujima-san, and she treated me much like one would treat something they'd scraped from the bottom of their shoes.

Barely a moment after speaking, Takashi took off running through the corridors of the school, and I followed closely behind. We stopped outside a classroom; Takashi went in while I waited outside. I could see how awkward this conversation was going to be, and I did _not _want to be anywhere near it, no matter how bad the situation might be. I could hear a lot of shouting from inside the classroom … and the sharp, resounding sound of someone being slapped. I had heard it before – mostly when I was the one being hit – and I couldn't ever mistake it for something else.

A few moments later, Takashi exited the classroom with both Rei and Hisashi. Hisashi was a tall boy with grey hair, and he kept his uniform about as formal as it could get.

Rei had a rather unique appearance. Her hair had a strange colouration that looked like a mix of orange and brown; it was styled in a ponytail, and two antennae-like bangs stood out at the front. Her eyes were a reddish-brown. She wore the girls' school uniform, which consisted of a white dress shirt with a green collar, a black ribbon, and a green skirt that came to _way _above the knees. She had a slender figure and larger than average breasts. Despite having no such interest in her myself, I could certainly see why Takashi and Hisashi had such strong feelings for her, the attractive girl that she was. There was also a nasty red mark on her right cheek, which made me assume that Takashi had had to hit her to get her to listen to him. Not something I really approved of, but in a situation like this it was probably necessary.

I exchanged brief nods with Hisashi and Rei, assuming they were both aware of the situation by now, and the four of us took off through the halls without a word. Hisashi, Rei and I followed after Takashi, who seemed like he knew where he wanted to go. He stopped near a supply closet, so we did, too, and Takashi heaved it open and began looking through. He took out a golf club and handed it to me; he broke a broom handle and handed the now sharp stick to Rei; Hisashi opted to go unarmed, saying that he was a black-belt in karate; Takashi himself took out a baseball bat.

Now that we had weapons, there was only one question that mattered: What were we going to do? Nothing had really happened since the incident Takashi and I had witnessed at the gate, so just running through the school like this was going to make us look like we'd all gone crazy. _And why the hell was there sports equipment in the supply closet? _I couldn't help but wonder.

"Maybe we should call the police," said Rei.

I didn't really see the point – if there was a zombie just casually hanging out in front of the school, the odds were that there were a whole lot more in other places. I didn't voice these thoughts, however. Takashi handed Rei his phone – being the only one of us to have his on him – and she dialled 1-1-0. Her face quickly became covered in worry, and it became clear that we wouldn't be able to get through to anyone.

The intercom system suddenly sprung to life in a burst of static. And then a panicked voice spoke.

"If I may have your attention, please. There is an emergency situation taking place inside the school. I must ask that you remain ca—" The sound of a door being forced open could be heard through the speakers. "No! _No_! How did you get in here!? _Get away from me_! _AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH_!"

The intercom system cut off with a click.

The sheer amount of tension in the school at that moment could have been cut through with a knife. The situation was about as fucked up as it could get, and now every single person in the school knew it. The ground and walls of the school began to vibrate as screams of panic and terror began to rise up from all the classrooms; barely a second later, all the students and teachers began pouring out of the classrooms, every single one of them screaming in terror. Takashi, Rei, Hisashi and I were away from the classrooms, but we could clearly see the crowd trampling over one another through the windows.

In my personal opinion, the ones that got trampled to death were the lucky ones.

Hisashi walked past all of our shock-frozen forms and into a tunnel-like overpass.

"What are you doing?" Takashi asked him.

"The classroom building is too crowded, we'll have a better chance if we go to the roof," said Hisashi.

I moved to follow instantly, thinking it was a pretty solid plan. Rei did, too … but Takashi didn't move a muscle.

"Hisashi is right," Rei said with a glare when it looked like Takashi was about to start arguing. "Just shut up and do what he says."

Takashi moved to join us without another word.

We moved across the overpass until we came across someone who wasn't part of the crowd. It was one of the teachers, but … he didn't look quite like he should have. His skin had gone pale, turning a sort of grey colour, and his eyes appeared to have rolled back into his head, showing only white. He looked almost like he belonged in _The Exorcist_. The four of us stopped, but he seemed to know we were there, and he began shambling toward us. He seemed to be zoning in on Rei in particular.

"Rei! Stab him!" said Hisashi. Rei looked hesitant. "Don't hold back! Give it all you got!"

Rei still seemed to hesitate, and the zombified teacher drew closer, moaning out in a dead sounding voice. Her hesitance very nearly cost her, and the zombie grabbed onto her. They struggled – I didn't think I could safely get involved, seeing as Rei and the zombie were so close together, and if Takashi and Hisashi's lack of action was any indication, they thought much the same – and Rei tried to hold the zombie back by holding her makeshift spear out between them. The struggle went on for only a few more moments … and then Rei got _angry_.

She shoved the zombie a few feet away from her with some new burst of strength. "Don't fuck with me!" she said in an angry growl. She leapt forward and punctuated her words by whacking the zombie with her broom handle. "I'm a member of the spear martial arts club!" In her rage, she stabbed the sharp end of the spear into the left side of the zombie's chest, and the dead thing went limp.

I could feel a huge grin break out on my face.

Takashi fist pumped and said, "Yes!"

… And then the zombie moved again. It grabbed the spear that was still impaled in it and swung it to the side, forcing Rei into the wall, and she collapsed to the ground. The zombie went to move toward her, but she grabbed the handle end of the spear and pushed him away, struggling to keep him at bay.

"I don't get it!" Rei yelled in a panic. "I'm stabbing him in his heart … _why _is he still _moving_!?"

"… Because he _is _dead …" I heard Takashi mutter beside me. "He's dead but still moving!"

Hisashi took the initiative and ran forward, grabbing the zombie by its arms from behind. It seemed as though Hisashi was relatively safe in doing this … and then the zombie turned its head and, despite an obvious struggle to do so, got it to do a full _one-eighty_. It opened its jaws and bit down on Hisashi's arm.

_What the fuck …? _I thought as I watched on in horror. My eyes were wide at the display in front of me. _That … that shouldn't even be _possible_! It should have broken its fucking _neck _trying to pull that off! Just what the hell is going on here …?_

Hisashi's shouts made it sound like it hurt, but from what I could see, no skin was broken. There was certainly no blood, anyway. Rei stood up and tried desperately to pull the zombie off her boyfriend. After a few attempts, she turned to Takashi and I and glared at us fiercely.

"You two, do something!" she shouted at us. "_Do something_, _will you_!?"

Takashi and I sprinted forward. Takashi brought his baseball bat down on the zombie's back, and I took to swinging at its legs with my golf club. Neither of us could hit its head without risk of also hitting Hisashi, so we were doing our best to just get it off him.

But then a particularly loud yell from Hisashi caught my attention. I looked up from where I was hitting the zombie's legs, and, to my horror, its teeth had sunk deeper into Hisashi's arm and now blood was spouting out of it.

Takashi let out an angry yell and charged forward, bringing his bat down hard on the zombie's head. Its blood exploded outward, as did a few fragments of bone, and it released its bite on Hisashi, falling to the floor limply. The others all looked at least a little nauseated by this; strangely, however, I felt next to nothing. I felt sympathetic toward the man this vile creature once was, but that was all. The blood didn't bother me in the slightest.

We all panted from a surprising amount of exertion, but no one said anything. Hisashi began to clutch his bleeding arm. We began to move forward, though Hisashi was walking slightly slower than the rest of us. I slowed my pace a little as to walk with him.

"You've seen what these things are," I said to him grimly. "You know what normally happens now, right?"

Hisashi merely nodded in response, a resigned look on his face.

I felt a certain emptiness in my chest. It pained me to see one of my closest friends in such a condition. "Look on the bright side," I said, doing my best to fake an upbeat tone. I'm not sure how convincing it was. "This isn't the movies, it's _real life_. Who says it has to work the way we've always thought it did?"

I found that I didn't believe my own words. And, if the look on his face was anything to go by, neither did Hisashi. Yet still he managed to smile at me. It was weak, sure, but it was still a smile. I smiled sadly back.

The four of us ascended some stairs and found ourselves on the roof … and when I laid eyes on the city below, any hope of this ending quickly was sucked straight out of me. There was smoke rising up from several places, and the sheer amount of destruction was baffling to behold. It hadn't even been an hour, yet already the entire city looked like a scene from _World War Z_.

"What happened …?" asked Rei, a prominent shake in her voice. "Everything was fine a minute ago …"

Even if any of us had spoken afterwards, I doubt if it would have been heard. The deafening sound of helicopters approached rapidly, and then a number of military grade choppers flew right past the school, creating a gale of wind that blew up Rei's skirt, giving us all quite the view, and lead to Hisashi having to hold her up so that she wasn't blown over by the strong wind created by the choppers. As they passed by, Rei began waving her arms in the air.

"_Hey_!" she shouted at the top of her lungs. "_We're over here_!"

"Don't bother," said Hisashi. He was still clutching his wounded arm to his chest. "I wouldn't even waste your strength. That's the self-defence force. They probably have some kind of special mission. They aren't here to rescue us … they aren't even doing anything about that." He nodded toward the school grounds below us, where the few students and teachers that remained were either running for their lives or screaming in pain whilst the dead swarmed over them, ripping out chunks of flesh and bone with their teeth.

I was looking around. I was barely even registering the conversation my friends were having. My eyes scanned over the rooftop, searching for anything that might give us any sort of help. There were an awful lot of zombies on the roof, I noticed, especially when one considered the fact that they had gotten up here pretty damn quickly. But I chose to question that later, if I ever chose to question it at all. I looked past the zombies … and saw exactly what I was looking for. There was a set of stairs that lead up to what looked like some kind of large closet. If I remembered correctly, that was the closet where they kept extra tables and chairs in case any of the ones currently in use got broken.

"Hey, guys," I said, getting the attention of my three companions. I nodded toward the stairs. "If we can get up there, we can use the tables and stuff to barricade ourselves in, maybe wait for the situation to clear up a bit."

Curiously – and luckily for us – the zombies apparently hadn't noticed us at all. We briefly checked with Hisashi to see if he was still fit to run – he was – and then Hisashi, Rei and I all looked to Takashi. I wasn't quite sure why back then, but I felt like he should be the one to decide when to go.

"Let's go!" said Takashi, and we all sprung into action.

We took off across the rooftop in a sprint. Hisashi was lingering behind, but only slightly, and he was clutching at his wounded arm. Takashi, Rei and I killed any zombies that got directly in our way, but we avoided most of them because we didn't want to be slowed down. I honestly couldn't believe how easily we were taking this. The zombies were deathly pale and had white eyes, sure, but they still looked like students, teachers, old friends, and faces we may have passed in the hallway between classes … yet not one of us had any problem with killing them. The initial disgust at the bloodiness of it all had long since left the others.

We reached the stairs and ran up. Halfway up, however, Rei stopped and looked back down, probably making sure we weren't being followed too closely. There was one on the stairs just behind her, so she brought up her spear and, with a yell … stabbed it in the chest.

I honestly couldn't believe that, after all that stuff with the zombified teacher, she still hadn't aimed for the head when there was one of them _right in front of her_!

"Are you _nuts_?" Takashi asked, at the same time as I said, "Are you fucking _stupid_?" Apparently we shared the same thought process, but had different ways of wording our thoughts.

"Say what!?" Rei asked aggressively.

She got a nasty shock when the zombie she'd stabbed grabbed onto her spear and forced it to the side, making her smash against the wall and fall over on the stairs. The zombie, which was now crawling, made its way toward her …

Takashi readied his bat, but before he could do anything, Hisashi shouted Rei's name and took the bat from him, running down the stairs and smashing the bat against the zombie's head, forcibly slamming its head into the wall. Its blood and bones exploded from its head, surprisingly not splashing all over Rei, and the two of them began walking back up the stairs toward Takashi and I. Another zombie was halfway up the stairs when Hisashi charged it and kicked it, making it tumble down the stairs and smash its head off the floor.

When Hisashi and Rei got back up the stairs, the four of us got to work on making the barricade.

It was quite sturdy, which is surprising when one considers what it was built out of. We had carefully stacked up a number of tables and chairs, then tied them to the rails of the stairs with rope so that they would stay in place. A few zombies were banging on it, but that was nothing to worry about; they weren't even making it shake.

We were all sitting down and relaxing now that we had the chance to do so. I briefly wondered how long the barricade would last, but decided it didn't matter. We weren't planning on staying up here permanently, anyway.

Our moment of relaxation came to an abrupt end, however, when Hisashi started coughing. It started out fairly tame, but then it got worse. He was hunching over, near enough convulsing, and then he stood straight and coughed up quite a lot of blood. We crowded around him, Rei hugging onto him. We were all worried, and I thought I knew what was happening … and it saddened me greatly. I got the feeling the others knew, as well, but wanted to say something about as little as I did.

Hisashi's coughing fit stopped just long enough for him to speak. His voice was weak. "Looks like you were wrong, Paul," he said with a bitter chuckle. "It _is _just like in the movies. You get bit … and that's it."

"That can't be true," Rei said through flowing tears. "What you see in the movies will never happen!"

"But it _did _happen … to everyone else," said Hisashi. He turned his head to Takashi and I with what looked like quite a large and painful struggle. "Takashi … Paul … help me …"

"Help you with what?" Takashi asked him.

"Help me … over the rail. The force from the landing … should smash my head …"

"Why would you do something like that?" asked Rei. Her voice was now weak with tears.

"I DON'T WANNA BE ONE OF THEM!" Hisashi's shout was followed up by another coughing fit, in which he coughed up what looked to be most of his remaining blood supply. Now he really looked like he was having some sort of seizure.

"No! Hisashi!" cried Rei, hugging onto him as tightly as she could. "_You can't die_!"

Hisashi's coughing stopped as suddenly as it had started. He sat and convulsed for a few seconds … then stopped. Hisashi lay completely still. Not breathing. Not doing _anything_.

My blood felt like ice in my veins. I couldn't imagine what Rei was feeling, her being Hisashi's girlfriend and all, but I felt like some important part of my life had been torn away. I only had four real friends. Three of them were on that roof with me, but one of those three was now dead. I felt like I would have been crying if it weren't for the fact that I was so practised at holding it in.

I noticed the grip Takashi had on his bat visibly tighten.

"Get away from him, Rei," said Takashi. His voice was dead serious and quiet.

Rei looked up at him, her eyes wide, then threw herself over Hisashi's body like a protective shield. "No!" she said. "He's not turning! He's not turning into one of them! He's going to be fine!"

Takashi turned his gaze to me, a pleading look in his eyes. Understanding, I nodded at him. I walked forward and grabbed both of Rei's arms, pulling her up and away with ease despite her desperate struggles to get free. I took no pleasure in this, but I understood that it needed to be done.

Then Hisashi's hand twitched.

"See!" said Rei, yet again attempting to pull away from my grip on her arms. "Look! He's fine!" She struggled more. "_Let go of me_!"

"Sorry, Rei," I said, keeping any and all emotion out of my voice. "But that thing isn't Hisashi any more."

She continued to struggle, yelling out denials of what I said all the while.

Hisashi stood up. His greying skin and ghostly white eyes were all the proof I needed to tell me he most certainly _wasn't _fine.

"I know you can't believe it," said Takashi. His voice sounded blank.

"You can't," Rei whimpered.

"Even _I _can't believe it."

"Don't do it."

"But it's happening."

"Takashi …"

"IT'S HAPPENING!" Takashi yelled at the top of his lungs as he charged forward, raising his bat high, and then he brought it down hard on Hisashi's head. Blood and brains washed all over the floor near the corpse.

"_No_!" Rei screamed, and I finally let her go. She ran forward to kneel beside her dead boyfriend. "Why?" she asked Takashi, looking up at him with her tear-stained face.

"He would have bitten you if I didn't do that," said Takashi.

"I didn't ask you to save me!" Rei said in a growl. "How would you know, anyway? What are you, some kind of expert?" She sniffed and looked down at Hisashi. "… Then I would've been willing to get bitten. Better to die like that than survive by doing something like this …"

"I don't think Hisashi would have wanted that for you," said Takashi.

"How would you know that, Takashi!?" Rei's face broke out in a deranged smirk, like she was mocking him. "Oh, I know, you must've hated Hisashi, right? _Because he was dating me_!"

I had kept silent during the argument, knowing that these two had a lot of emotional baggage to sort out. This, however, I thought was too harsh. Takashi was bitter about the fact that Rei dumped him and started going out with Hisashi, sure, but he had never _hated _the guy … at least, not to my knowledge.

I was about to say something when Takashi just started walking over to the barricade. He wasn't saying a word. Even worse, he wasn't making any effort to deny what Rei had just said.

"Where do you think you're going!?" Rei's tone was still aggressive.

Takashi turned around to face her. "You obviously don't want me around," he said blankly. "I'm gonna go downstairs and smash some heads."

I recoiled at his statement, as did Rei.

"What are you talking about?" asked Rei. Her voice had gone from angry to panicked. "You can't take that many by yourself!"

Takashi didn't respond. He started to climb over the barricade.

"Hey … Takashi?" I said as gently as I could. I was fully prepared to go and pull Takashi down if he went too far, though I hoped it didn't come to that. "Takashi, stop messing around!"

Rei suddenly ran forward and grabbed Takashi by the arm. She was crying again, and she was clinging to his arm like her life depended on it. "I'm sorry!" she cried. "I didn't mean it! I _really _didn't mean it! So, please … stay with me. _Don't leave me_!"

That was all the crying she got done before Takashi climbed down from the barricade and wrapped his arms around her in a tight hug. She seemed surprised by this, but hugged back after a few moments. They stood there without a word being said, simply resting in each other's arms.

I found myself smiling softly at the sight. It would appear that, despite everything that had happened, the two of them still had feelings for each other.

_That's good, _I thought as I watched the two of them. _That means they have something to fight for … and I don't._

I let a sad smile appear on my face as Takashi and Rei seemed to forget I was even there.

* * *

**So, how did you guys like it? I think it's a definite improvement over my first attempt. Now all I have to do is proofread it and upload it. I'll start my editing of chapter 2 as soon as I've got this one out.**

**The title of this chapter was inspired by the lyrics of the song "Re: Your Brains", in case any of you are interested. It's a really fun song that I totally recommend you check out.**

**See you next time!**


	2. Breaking Out of Pris- I Mean, School

**Welcome to chapter two! God damn, I love writing for this story. Okay, so there's going to be some changes to the events in this chapter when compared to the original version, plus some extra dialogue here and there where I thought it was appropriate. Though I'm sure you expected that already.**

**Let's begin.**

* * *

Breaking Out of Pris— I Mean, School

"All set?" I called out to Rei. Takashi and I were clutching a long, thick fire hose and aiming it at the slowly failing barricade. Takashi had apparently loosened something in his attempts to climb over, and that was making it all the easier for the zombies to break through. Takashi and Rei had begun to refer to the zombies as "Them," but that only served to confuse me, so I stuck to calling them zombies.

"Ready!" I heard Rei call out from her spot by the water valve that was on the far side of the small closet we had gotten the tables and chairs out of. The reason both Takashi and I were holding on to the hose was because it was big, and that meant it would be _really _powerful; the odds were that it would go completely out of control if it weren't held down properly. One could never be too careful.

Takashi looked at me and nodded. I nodded back in confirmation.

"Crank it!" Takashi yelled to Rei.

I heard the water flowing through the hose before I felt it, and before I knew it, the hose was spraying torrents of cold water at the deteriorating barricade. The flow of the water was so powerful that it broke through what remained of the barricade almost instantly and knocked any zombies in front of it off their feet. I could distinctly hear necks snapping and skulls cracking as the undead beasts were flung down the stairs and onto the concrete rooftop. Grinning, I held my hand up for a high five, which Takashi gave me with no hesitation whatsoever. The water shut off, and Rei came around the corner to see the results of our handiwork. Takashi and I dropped the hose and picked up our weapons.

"Remember when the fire-fighters showed us how the hoses work back in junior high?" Rei asked suddenly. I knew the question was directed solely at Takashi, as I had only met these two upon entering high school. Takashi and Rei shared a laugh.

I laughed, as well. "They did that at my school, too," I said. "One of the class clowns got a hold of one of the hoses and ended up spraying all the teachers. Let me tell you, we didn't see him for a _while_."

I spoke fondly of my old classmate, the old class clown, but I hadn't truly known him very well. I hadn't known anybody very well, as a matter of fact, until I had started attending high school. When I thought about it, my father's abuse had effected me more than I had initially thought, apparently leaving marks on me that I took outside that monstrously terrifying household. With Hisashi gone, I only had one real friend other than Takashi and Rei. I didn't count on Kouta being alive, though. It wasn't that I didn't have faith in him, but the odds weren't exactly in Kouta's favour. Unless, of course, he somehow got hold of a gun …

_He'd probably geek out for too long and get eaten, _I thought with a fond smile. _As unlikely as it is, I really hope Kouta's alive … It'd be a shame to lose another friend. _There was one other person I really wanted to be alive, but I sincerely doubted she would be happy to see _me _alive … and that thought brought the empty feeling in my chest back full force.

"Let's go," said Takashi, and our brief moment of normality ended.

Our time on the rooftop had been brief, but it had changed us far more than any of us cared to admit. It had changed me, anyway. For the first time in a long time, I was scared, and for the first time in my life the fear wasn't for myself. I had lost a friend already, and as much as I tried to push it down, the underlying fear that I would lose the others was a constant from that moment onward.

In some ways, it was even worse than being scared for myself.

* * *

_**Thirty minutes earlier …**_

We sat there in complete silence after Rei and Takashi finally broke their hug. I found that I really didn't want to speak, if only to maintain the illusion that the world was still calm, still as peaceful as it had been when I'd woken up that morning.

"This is really fucked up," said Takashi, breaking the silence.

Rei looked at him, frowning. "You're so blunt," she said.

"What good would it have done if he'd lied about it?" I asked. I gestured with my head to the barricade, which could be seen visibly moving and breaking as the zombies pushed against it from the other side. I could tell that it wouldn't take them long to break through. I could hear their throaty moans as they tried to get to us.

After a few more moments of silence, Rei stood up and looked at Takashi. "Give me your phone," she said.

Takashi handed her his phone without protest. "We still can't get through to 1-1-0," he said. "Even if your dad's on the force …" He never finished his sentence, but I knew what he was getting at. I was sure Rei did, too.

"It's okay," said Rei. "He gave me this secret number he said never to call unless it's an emergency." She dialled the number into the phone while saying this, then put the phone to her ear. Apparently thinking better of it, she took the phone away from her ear and set it to speaker so that we could all hear. The familiar sound of the phone being answered resounded after a few seconds, and Rei near enough jumped for joy.

"Hello?" came a man's voice from the other end of the phone. I could only assume it was Rei's father. "This number is … Takashi-kun, that you?"

"Dad? Dad!? We're at school …" Rei was practically screaming the words, but she was cut off.

"Hello? Takashi-kun? Did you get this number from Rei? Is she safe …?"

There lay the only problem. It would seem that Rei's father couldn't hear anything from our end.

That didn't stop Rei from trying, though. "Dad! Can you hear me!?"

Static began to sound through the phone, and we could only hear bits and pieces of what Rei's father was saying. "… is. Got it? Your family … from there to town …"

"Dad! _Dad_!" There was no "practically" about it; Rei was now full-on screaming. Tears were leaking from her eyes.

The distorted voice of Rei's father continued, "… it seems …" There was a loud _thud _on the other end of the line. "Got it? The town …"

And then the line went dead.

"He … hung up …" Rei said weakly, fighting her tears and losing miserably. She looked down at the phone. "No signal? But I was just on the phone! Why!? How!?" She was relentlessly pushing buttons on the phone. She was shouting at it angrily.

"Rei!" Takashi shouted at her.

I just watched on. I wanted to help, I really did, but my input wouldn't have been of much use to any of us. I didn't even know what having caring family members was like, so I sure as hell wouldn't understand what _worrying _about a family member was like.

Rei looked at Takashi, the tears openly pouring from her eyes now. "Takashi. My dad never …" she sniffed, "… realised it was me!" She began sobbing loudly, and Takashi moved in to hug her again.

_It might not have been the phone that died, _I couldn't help but think.

* * *

_**Present …**_

After all that, Rei had come up with the idea to use the hose. In the meantime, all I could offer were a few encouraging words. I couldn't pretend to understand what my two friends were going through in regards to their families, so I couldn't say anything understanding or reassuring without lying through my teeth. I assumed my mother was dead because I had always lived alone with my father (who I _really _fucking hoped was dead). I only called that man my father as a courtesy, a courtesy that he in no way deserved.

The three of us walked down the stairs and across the roof together, killing any zombies we happened to pass along the way. I planned on following Takashi's lead – and I assumed Rei did, too – since I had no real plan of my own. I had always been more of a follower, anyway.

"Where … do we go?" asked Rei.

I was right; she was planning on following Takashi's lead. Takashi put on a smile, but I could tell it was fake; I didn't point that out, though. Takashi had every right to be unhappy – we were _all _unhappy. If anything, Takashi being able to put on even a fake smile was rather impressive given the circumstances.

"Our homes!" said Takashi, his voice filled with clearly fake enthusiasm. "Staying here forever won't do us any good. We'll hook up with other survivors somehow and help each other get back home. Even though we all live up in the dorms, everybody's from town. Something'll come of it."

Rei's eyes widened slightly. "Oh yeah, I bet you're both worried about your families, too," she said. She sounded somewhat guilty about not having considered our own situations earlier.

"Well, the only family I have can't help us out, anyway," I said quickly. "They're way outside this city. So we only really need to worry about you two."

No, I hadn't told them about my father's abuse. Was I going to? Not if I could help it. Not only did dragging up old memories make me feel really shitty inside, I didn't want to come off as any stranger than I already had. The loner attitude I put up around most people already made me seem weird enough.

"I can't call my parents, anyway," said Takashi. "My dad's on a business trip and my mom's an elementary school teacher, so she's not home. If we called she'd just make a racket about us interrupting her."

"Don't make me laugh at a time like this!" Rei said to him, trying and failing to stifle her laughter.

The fact that Takashi's mother was a school teacher made me worry about him. When I looked around and considered the situation at our own school, I could only begin to imagine how Takashi must be feeling about his mother being in the same sort of environment. But again, I had no mother, so I kept my mouth shut because there was no way I would be able to truly understand.

We went back into the school through the roof. It was relatively quiet where we were, as apparently the zombies had gone elsewhere to look for food. We made our way carefully and quietly through the blood-soaked corridors of our once great school.

_Blam!_

The noise stopped us in our tracks. We all looked around, confused, wondering where the loud noise had come from. There wasn't much in our school that could produce a noise like that. It almost reminded me of a …

"Gunshot?" Takashi suggested.

"Not loud enough," I said. "If it was a real gun it'd be louder, and real ones don't echo like that did. It's probably makeshift from a bunch of crap they found lying around school. If they're still alive, we should probably go find them." I couldn't help the small spark of hope that sprung up within me. There was only one person I knew who could improvise a gun and have it work perfectly …

"They're coming from the faculty room," said Rei.

The three of us took off running in the direction of the supposed gunshots. We ran and ran and ran, and our resolve only increased when the scream sounded out: blood-curdling and terrified. Despite the situation and the need for other survivors, I could not help feeling dread encircle me as I thought _That scream sounds unpleasantly familiar …_

And, whether it was a good thing or a bad thing, the scream came from someone we all knew.

We turned the corner near the faculty office and saw the screamer: Saya Takagi. She had bright pink hair that was tied up in two long ponytails. As we arrived, she was in the process of drilling a zombie between the eyes with a power drill. Its blood and brain matter flew everywhere as the tool spun around inside its cranium.

"Damn you!" Takagi-san screamed at it. "Die! Die!"

From around the corner, arriving at the same time we did, came two women. One of these two was the school nurse, Shizuka Marikawa. She was a blonde bombshell with hair that reached her waist, and breasts that would make any man drool a waterfall. The humorous image of her beating a zombie to death with them briefly crossed my mind, and made me laugh a little despite the circumstances. As one of the faculty members at the school, she dressed formally in a white dress shirt and a long brown skirt, which at the moment was torn at the sides, probably to aid in movement. She was the only person that I knew of who knew of the abuse my father inflicted upon me; being the school nurse, she had all my medical files, which mostly consisted of all the damage the bastard had done to me over the years.

The other woman was a student, one that I recognised in an instant. I was relieved to see her safe, yet I knew that problems were just waiting to happen if the past was anything to go by. The girl was none other than my boken-wielding crush, Saeko Busujima. She had long, straight purple hair that came down in a triangular fringe at the front. She was slender and had a full, curvy figure. Her beauty was truly a sight to behold. Our eyes met briefly, and hers narrowed in a glare, but she quickly caught herself and seemed to focus on the situation at hand.

"Me and Paul got the ones on the right," Takashi said to Rei. "You help her with the left."

Everyone nodded, and we got to work. I used my golf club with great efficiency as I brought it down on the waiting skulls of the zombie horde. It broke cleanly into their heads, spraying their blood and brain matter everywhere as it was removed. Me with my golf club, Takashi with his baseball bat, Rei with her spear, and Busujima-san with her boken; blood and brains flew everywhere as the four of us bashed and stabbed at the heads of the undead monsters.

I was quite surprised during all this to find that I wasn't all that bothered. It wasn't like I was only just numbing to it, either. From the very beginning, I could not remember ever being bothered by the fact that I was bashing in the heads of my schoolmates and teachers. My mind came to a conclusion almost subconsciously: For quite possibly the first time in my life, _I _was the one dealing out the damage, I wasn't the one _taking _it. The idea of being the one on top, the one who dealt the blows rather than being subjected to them, was actually _exciting _me.

_What the hell did that bastard make me into …? _I found myself wondering.

I smashed in the head of one final zombie and looked at the others. Everyone was covered in blood, myself included. The others were all panting from the exertion, but otherwise looked no worse for the ware.

"Takagi-san, are you okay?" asked Rei.

"Miyamoto …" Takagi-san whimpered out.

"I take it you know Nurse Marikawa?" Busujima-san said to Takashi. "I'm Saeko Busujima. Third year, class A."

"Takashi Komuro, Class 2-B," said Takashi.

Rei took a look at Busujima-san and her face exploded in delight. "You're Busujima-senpai, who won the national tournament last year," she said. "I'm Rei Miyamoto from the spear club."

"Ah, uh …" said a male voice. This was my other good friend, Kouta Hirano. He was an overweight student with black hair and large, square-rimmed glasses. He kept his uniform on as formally as he could – blazer closed and everything – and he also happened to be holding what looked like a modified nail gun. "I'm K-Kouta Hirano from c-class B," he said.

"Hey, Kouta," I said with a wide smile. I liked Kouta because I could somewhat relate to him. We'd both had to put up with shit from other people, and we'd both been effected because of it. "Good to see you alive, buddy. Nice nail gun."

Kouta smiled back at me. "Thanks," he said. "It's good to see you alive, too, Paul. Oh, you should have seen me with this baby …" He held up his nail gun with a wide grin on his face, a grin which I mimicked.

"I can picture it quite clearly," I said. "Kouta Hirano, resident gun-toting badass." We shared another smile.

"Nice to meet you," Saeko said to Kouta after he and I had finished our little exchange. She gave him a smile, and despite the fact that it wasn't aimed at me, just seeing it made my insides flutter.

They all looked at me. I wasn't quite sure why – everyone knew me except for the nurse and maybe Takagi-san, since she seemed to pay so little attention to people.

"Paul Blake, class 3-A," I said. "Now can we get the fuck on with this?" I didn't mean to sound so aggressive, but being stared at like that put me on edge a little.

"What's everyone getting all slack-jawed over?" Takagi-san asked angrily.

"What are you talking about, Takagi?" Takashi asked her.

"Don't mock me!" Takagi-san yelled. "I'm a genius! I'm smarter than all of you combined!"

"It's okay now," said Busujima-san. She approached Takagi-san slowly and gently. "Stop this."

Takagi-san caught sight of her reflection in a nearby mirror and tensed up. Her face was full of despair. "Aww, I got dirty," she said quietly. "I'll have to tell mom to take this to the cleaners …" She suddenly broke down in a torrent of tears, sobbing loudly. She hugged Busujima-san to her, sobbing into her chest. The rest of us were silent.

We all just stood there and let her release the emotions that had clearly been building for quite a long time now.

* * *

Takashi, Kouta and I pushed the desk up against the door of the faculty office. After the final shove, we rested, panting from the exertion. The desks in the faculty office were a lot heavier than the ones used in the classrooms.

"That'll do it," Takashi said with a sigh.

"Yep," Kouta said, equally out of breath.

"Good," I said. "That means we can take a break."

The fact that the desks in the faculty office were heavier than they looked made them ideal for barricading ourselves in here. I had to smile a little at the convenience of having a few large, heavy objects in the room. Other than Hisashi's untimely death – which still made me feel a little empty when I thought about it – things had actually been going our way so far, and I hoped it would stay that way a little while longer. But I didn't bet on it.

Kouta started wandering around the room, and he happened to pass by the bathroom that Takagi-san had gone into. The sounds of a sink running could be heard through the open door. Kouta took a peak inside.

"Takagi-san, are you all right?" he asked as he stuck his head in the door. He froze there, and when he next spoke his voice had a sort of croaky quality to it. "Y-you wear glasses?"

"So what!?" Takagi-san's voice yelled out at him. "My contacts keep slipping out!"

Takagi-san then walked out of the bathroom, and she was indeed wearing a pair of thin-framed glasses. She looked rather pretty with them on, I admit, but they did nothing to hide the constantly annoyed expression on her face, unfortunately.

"Marikawa-sensei, where are your keys?" asked Takashi.

"They're in my bag," said Marikawa-sensei as she rooted through her handbag.

"No offence, but can your car even hold all of us?" I asked. I didn't want to sound rude, but Marikawa-sensei didn't strike me as someone who kept a lot of company, so I couldn't imagine that she'd have a car that could hold a lot of people.

Marikawa-sensei froze, and she began to look quite embarrassed. "Oops, I don't think it will …"

"What about the minibus the clubs use for field trips?" Kouta suggested. He had taken up a spot staring out the window. "The key's on the wall rack. The bus is still in the parking lot."

"A bus is fine and all, but where to?" asked Marikawa-sensei.

"We'll make sure all our families are safe," said Takashi. "We'll stop at everyone's houses, starting with the closest, and, if necessary, help them out. Then we'll look for somewhere safe. We're sure to find a spot."

"The police and special forces are on call, so there's gotta be shelters like when earthquakes hit," said Takagi-san.

"What is it?" Rei asked suddenly. "What's going on …?" She picked up a remote from a nearby desk and used it to turn on the TV that was mounted on the wall.

"… in response to the riots raging all over the country, the government has enacted emergency countermeasures," said a reporter on the TV. "However, the special forces public security operation is paying no heed to the current opposition party, and there is a strong argument for more cautious action …"

"Riots!?" Takashi yelled, suddenly rather angry. "What do they mean, _riots_!?"

"Already casualties are estimated in excess of one thousand," the reporter continued. "Prefectural governors are declaring a state of emergency and requesting disaster relief …" Several loud gunshots could be heard off-screen. "There are gunshots! The police have finally started firing! I don't know the situation, but …" A group of bloodied, decaying zombies walked into view of the camera, and the camera fell to the floor with a crash. Nothing more could be heard but the pained, blood-curdling screams of the reporter and the cameraman as they were eaten alive by the walking dead. The screen cut to static and all that could be seen were the words: _Please Stand By_.

"_That _was all they had to say about this shit!?" Takashi yelled.

"They're trying to avoid a panic," I said calmly. It wasn't easy to stay calm, mind you, but panicking and shouting was going to get us nowhere.

"Wow, one of you idiots is _right _about something for a change," said Takagi-san half-heartedly.

"Well fuck you, too, Takagi-san," I said, flipping her the bird.

"But isn't it a little late for that?" Rei asked.

"It's the perfect time for it!" Takagi-san snapped. "Fear gives rise to chaos. Chaos gives rise to the collapse of social order. And when social order collapses … how do you propose we retaliate against the walking dead?"

_With a crossbow-wielding badass and a comatose cop, _I thought, struggling not to chuckle to myself. I picked up the remote for the TV from where Rei had left it, and then I began to flip through the channels. It really was _everywhere_. It was here in Japan. It was in France. Spain. England. The United fucking States! Every single news network I found was talking about the zombies, showing footage of the cities in ruin. And every single one of them was trying to pass it off as mass rioting.

"When I surfed the net this morning everything was fine," said Kouta. His voice was quiet, empty.

"It can't be …" said Rei, "… in just a few hours the whole world's gone to hell. I'm right, aren't I? There's got to be somewhere safe, right? Things have got to go back to how they were …"

"Probably not," I said bluntly. I bit my own tongue afterwards, though; I hadn't meant to say that out loud.

"Did anyone ask for your input?" Busujima-san asked me, glaring. Her voice was angry, but not really aggressive … it was quite strange.

I held my hands up in surrender. "Okay, for fuck sake, _sorry_," I said. "I didn't realise it was illegal to _speak _now, especially when I'm saying what we're basically all fucking thinking." She looked surprised, and I _felt _surprised. That was the first time I had ever spoken back to her. It didn't stop the pained feeling in my chest in response to her apparent hatred, though. I doubted anything could ever numb that …

"Stop arguing, you two," Takagi-san ordered us. She gestured her head at me. "He's right. This is a pandemic, there's _nothing _we can do!"

"Pandemic …" Marikawa-sensei muttered.

"I mean explosive infection! As in the same illness breaking out all over the world." I could hear her intelligence on full display as she spoke. As much as I hated to admit it, she had every right to brag about her smarts.

"Like the flu?" asked Takashi.

"The Spanish Flu in 1918 was the same. And more recently, the Bird Flu was feared to have the same potential. You know how you can't take flu lightly, right? The Spanish Flu hit more than six hundred million people and claimed the lives of five hundred million …"

"It could be closer to the Black Death from the 14th Century," said Marikawa-sensei.

"A third of Europe died." Takagi-san nodded in agreement.

"How did the spread of infection stop?" asked Takashi.

"There are different theories, but the most commonly believed is that, when enough people die, it just peters out because there's nobody left to infect," said Marikawa-sensei.

"But …" Kouta said with a sigh, "now everyone who dies gets up and attacks other people."

"Meaning there's no reason this should stop," said Busujima-san.

"The weather should be warming up soon, so if the flesh rots off and there's only bone they should stop moving," said Marikawa-sensei.

"How long will that take?"

"There are five stages of decomposition," I said. Busujima-san looked a little irritated that I had spoken, but a moment later her face took on its serious quality again. I briefly noted that her annoyed look lasted a much shorter time than it normally did. "Initial Decay, Putrefaction, Black Putrefaction, Butyric Fermentation, and Dry Decay.

"Initial Decay is what we're seeing here: grey skin, sunken eyes, the works. Putrefaction is when the gases build up and the body gets fat, particularly around the facial area; the skin gets pretty loose, too, and it'll just sort of start to peel off. Black Putrefaction turns the skin black, lets all the built-up gases escape – which flattens out the body – and all the internal organs liquefy … including the brain. So, if they're going to decompose, I'd guess that they'd die during the Black Putrefaction stage. It normally takes about twenty days to reach that point. The whole decomposition process itself takes almost a year to complete."

I stopped speaking and noticed everyone was staring at me. While Marikawa-sensei looked almost impressed with my knowledge on the subject, everyone else was looking at me in a _What the hell? _sort of way. I scratched the back of my neck sheepishly and felt the heat rise to my face. I _really _didn't like being stared at.

"As impressive as it is that you know that …" said Takashi. "I still have to ask … _why _do you know that?"

"You could fill an encyclopedia with the amount of weird shit I've found just by surfing the net when I'm bored," I said, shrugging. I shuffled on my feet uncomfortably. "Anyway, why does it matter? It gives us a time frame to work with, doesn't it?"

"We don't even know if they'll rot or not," said Takagi-san, sighing.

"What do you mean?" asked Takashi.

"The corpses reanimate and attack people," said Takagi-san. "It defies modern science. Worst case scenario is that they _never _decompose …"

"We can hope," I said. "They already look like they've _started_, at the very least."

"Once we've ascertained our families' well-being, the big question is where we go after that," said Busujima-san. "If we panic and run around aimlessly we'll never survive."

"A team," said Takashi. "We form a team. Let's gather other survivors."

"How do we get out?" asked Rei.

"The front entrance will bring us out closest to the parking lot," I said, trying to be helpful.

"Let's go!" said Takashi.

And then we went off running, fighting through the corridors of the school once again …

* * *

"These guys only react to noise!" Takagi-san told us as we moved through the school. "And they're strong enough to bust down a door, so if they catch you they'll eat you. Watch yourselves."

_Thank you for the advice, oh wise one, _I thought to myself. I could see the value in knowing the zombies were blind – I would have to have been mad not to – but I found it irritating that Takagi-san felt the need to remind us that the zombies would eat us if they caught us. As if we didn't already fucking know that!

As we continued to move through the school, a scream sounded out – it sounded relatively close by. We didn't even need to communicate; we simply set off running in the direction the scream was coming from, hoping that whoever it was was still alive when we got there. We ran for a short period of time before coming across a stairwell; there was an unusually large amount of zombies making their way down the stairs. The distinct sound of people fighting could be heard over the constant moaning of the undead horde.

I managed to get a look over the zombies' heads – which wasn't easy, considering how crowded in they were – and saw that, in the middle of the stairwell, stood five other students, three male and two female. The zombies were fast approaching them from both up and down the stairs, and one of the boys was getting ready to fight with a baseball bat.

But before the first zombie could get to him, it went tumbling to the ground, a nail sticking out of its head courtesy of Kouta's nail gun.

And then all hell broke loose again.

I didn't really remember the fight. I supposed it was because I was already used to it, that all the fights were now sort of blending together, nothing to really make them stand out from each other. I remembered the blood, the sound of bones breaking, the large number of corpses I had to step over in order to move after a while. The only thing I particularly remembered about this fight – the one thing that made it stand out among all others – was that all five of the people we were protecting were alive by the end.

Once all the zombies were disposed of, one of the girls in the group stepped forward.

"Thank—!" Her loud words of gratitude were swiftly cut off.

"Not so loud," Busujima-san warned her. "Was anybody bitten?"

A nervous look crossed the girl's face. "Uh … no, nobody."

"They look okay," said Rei. "Honest." Nobody disputed her.

"We're getting out of here," Takashi said to the group we had just saved.

"You coming?" I asked them.

"Y-yes," said the other girl in the group.

Our group, now larger by five, continued down the stairs, rapidly making our way to the front of the school. We killed and avoided the zombies as we passed them. It took us no time at all to reach where we wanted to go. However, when Takashi – who was at the head of our group – went to turn the corner that would take us to the area of the lockers, he jumped back almost immediately, knocking into me in the process. I barely managed to keep myself from falling over.

"_There are tons of them_," Takashi whispered.

"They can't see us," said Takagi-san. "So there's no need to hide."

"Then prove it, Takagi," said Takashi. Takagi-san's confident was replaced by a slightly more fearful one, and Takashi sighed. "Even if Takagi-san's theory is right … we can't move anywhere quietly with all these people."

"Somebody has to clear a path," said Busujima-san.

There were a few moments of silence, then Takashi sighed. "Okay, I'll do it," he said.

"No, Takashi, I should go …" said Rei.

"I should go first," said Busujima-san.

"No," said Takashi. "Busujima-senpai, I need you ready in case anythi—"

I didn't stay to listen to anything else; I was already making my way down to the lockers. I was halfway there by the time any of them seemed to notice I was gone. I was moving slowly, trying not to make any noise, and I was succeeding more than I thought I would. My breathing was steady and my heart was beating rapidly in my chest. I was scared, but relatively calm at the same time. As much as I disliked Takagi-san as a person, I had never once questioned her intelligence, and I had the utmost confidence that her theory was correct. I just thought I might as well test it for everyone instead of wasting time by standing there and fighting about who does so. Plus, everyone else in the group had more to lose should they die, so I thought it logical that I should be the one to take the risk.

I reached the middle of the room, where the zombies were most plentiful, and held my breath. There was one approaching me, coming straight toward me … and it walked past me, bumping my shoulder a little as it did so. Apparently they didn't even react to being touched. I released the breath I had been holding and allowed a smile to worm its way onto my face.

There was a shoe by my feet; it was covered in blood, but I wasn't really bothered. I knelt down, picked up the shoe, stood up again, then threw it down the corridor. It made a loud _bang _as it hit the wall, and all the zombies surrounding me started moaning and groaning. They began shambling past me and down the hallway toward the shoe, eventually emptying it out entirely.

With a smile, I walked toward the entrance doors of the school and held them open, signalling with my arm that the others should make their way down.

The others moved quickly but quietly, running down the stairs. Takashi made it out and looked at me seriously.

"Why did you just move ahead?" he asked in a whisper. "We were discussing who should go."

"The more time we spent discussing that, the more likely it is that one of the undead freakbags would've heard us," I whispered back. "Plus, it's pretty obvious to me that I'm the most expendable one here. So I just figured it might as well be me who took the risk."

Takashi looked like he was about to say something else to me … but then the last guy came out of the building, accidentally hitting the frame of the door with the large pole he had been using as a weapon on his way out. The resulting sound echoed through the hallway we had just come out of, and likely echoed through a few other hallways, too. The zombies that had been distracted by the shoe turned around and began to approach us, as did the zombies outside the school.

"… Shit," I said.

"RUN!" Takashi yelled at the top of his lungs. And run we did.

"Why'd you yell!?" Takagi-san asked Takashi as we all ran for our lives. "If we'd been quiet, we might've gotten away by just dealing with the closest ones!"

"The sounds echoed anyway, so wouldn't have done any good!" said Rei.

"Less talking, more running!" Takashi yelled at them.

I ran faster than I could ever remember running. Every time a zombie got in my way, _crack_, its brain was no longer contained within its skull. It was so intense that I barely noticed the members of the group we had saved being dragged down and eaten alive one by one. I just kept running and fighting.

Takashi was the first to reach the bus, myself hot on his heels, and, as expected, the bus was locked.

"Sensei!" Takashi yelled at Marikawa-sensei. "The key!"

Marikawa-sensei made it over, unlocked the bus with the key from the faculty room, and the lot of us piled in as fast as we could manage. Takashi and Busujima-san were the last ones to climb in, and they were about to close the door when the sounds of someone calling out stopped them in their tracks.

We all looked out the door of the bus and saw a large group of students being lead by a teacher. The teacher was a tall, thin man, whose appearance had always reminded me somewhat of a snake. He wore a pair of thin-framed glasses, and his hair was shoulder-length and black, just as black as his eyes were. His appearance warned one not to trust him way before his behaviour did.

"It's Shidou-sensei, from my homeroom," I said. I wasn't exactly thrilled to see my douchebag of a teacher, but I supposed it was good that more people had survived.

"_Shidou _…" Rei's voice came out in a hate-filled whisper.

"Wait jut a little bit, Marikawa-sensei," said Takashi.

"But they're gathering in front of us," said Marikawa-sensei, panicking, "and at this rate we'll flip the bus if we try to run them down."

Takashi looked like he was about to jump off the bus to help when Rei grabbed his arm. "You can't save him!" she shouted. I could tell from her tone of voice that she wasn't saying he was unable to save Shidou … she was _telling _him not to save Shidou.

"Rei! What are you talking about!?" Takashi asked her in shock and surprise.

"You don't have to save him!" she said. "He's better off dead!"

"That's a bit harsh," I said, but I wasn't sure I believed my own words. "I'll admit he's an asshole, but that's nothing to kill him over."

Rei levelled a glare at me, and I backed down immediately. It was too late not to help, though, as barely a moment later the students began to pile onto the bus. Shidou got on the bus after them, but one of his shoes was covered in blood – and it was only the bottom of it. No one else had blood-stained shoes, and the fact that Shidou did made me more than a little suspicious and paranoid.

Shidou closed the door of the bus behind him. "You saved us," he said, panting. "I take it either Busujima-san or Blake-san is the leader?"

I let out an involuntary snort of laughter. "Not on your life," I said. _Which I would gladly sacrifice, by the way, _I added in my mind.

"No one's in charge," Busujima-san said, as if I hadn't spoken. "We worked together to survive."

The bus was moving now, and the zombies in front of it were becoming little more than splats of blood and guts on the road.

"That won't do," said Shidou, smiling like a snake. "One needs leadership to survive. A leader to set the goals and protect the social order …"

"You're going to regret this," Rei said to Takashi. "I swear you'll regret saving him …"

I slumped myself down in an empty chair near the front of the bus and stared out the window. Despite the obvious tension in the bus, I found that I was not bothered by it all. My relief that we had gotten away far outweighed any negative emotions the others in the bus may have been feeling. I wanted to try and go to sleep, but knew it would be impossible to manage, so I simply sat and stared out the window as the bus drove on.

It was only a few hours later that we came to realise we truly _had _made a mistake in saving Shidou.

* * *

**And that's that! Okay, so I've changed it so that Paul is the one to test out Saya's theory, mainly because he doesn't like just sitting and waiting for people to sort things out when the solution to a problem is literally right in front of them. I've also given him a little more of a spine than he originally had, what with him talking back to Saeko earlier on, and snorting at Shidou's suggestion that he might be the leader. So do with that what you will.**

**See you guys next time!**


	3. Wheels on the Bus Crush Zombies' Skulls

**Hello, and welcome to the newly edited chapter three! This should be longer than it originally was, but still pretty short compared to chapters you normally see from me, so I apologise for that. There's gonna be a little more character interaction between our main leads than there originally was, and there'll even be a portion in the third person at the end in order to deal with the thoughts of our favourite purple-haired samurai. I hope you all enjoy.**

**Let's begin.**

* * *

The Wheels on the Bus Crush Zombies' Skulls~

"What did you mean?"

I was brought out of my dazed state, staring out the window of the bus, when Takashi sat down next to me. I looked at him, trying to regain my senses after having been staring out the window for so long, and raised an eyebrow at him in question. I didn't quite understand what he was asking.

"You said you're expendable," he said. "What did you mean by that?"

"What does it sound like?" I asked, and a yawn escaped my lips. I was finally getting tired, it would seem.

"It sounds like bullshit," he said, fixing me with a firm stare. "Why are you expendable? What makes you think your life is worth any less than any of ours?"

"… You all have family to find," I said. I didn't want to say it; it was actually somewhat painful to admit out loud. "I have one person who could be considered my family, and they're not only out of reach, they don't particularly give a shit. That's why, Takashi. Your families are waiting for you, probably even _looking _for you … but I don't have anyone like that. That's why I'm expendable."

There was an uncomfortable silence that felt like it lasted a lot longer than it actually did. Anyone else in my position probably would've cried, but I was experienced at holding back tears.

"Not to me," said Takashi. "You're my best friend, Paul … you've been there when I've been going through so much shit. I never asked you to, but you were there anyway. And there's no one I'd rather have with me in a survival situation. So don't go dying on me, you got it?"

I was genuinely stunned into silence. You see, the thing with me and Takashi is that we never had to have long conversations with each other. We were both relatively quiet when it came to social situations, so when we were in each other's company, we could say very little but still understand what the other was trying to say perfectly. However, I had never gotten the sense that _any _of my friends thought this highly of me, and as such, I was in no way prepared for this.

"… Takashi …" It was all I could bring myself to say, I was so stunned.

"No one ever stuck up for me like you did," Kouta said, and I turned to look at him. He was sitting next to Takagi-san, who seemed to be trying her best to look like she wasn't listening in on the conversation. "Whenever people picked on me, I normally just stood there and took it, tried to laugh it off because no one ever did anything about it … but whenever you were around, you told them where they could shove it. And that other time, when you found that guy beating me up, and you ended up sending him to the nurse's office … _no one_ has ever stood up for me like that." He smiled at me. "Like Komuro said, don't you dare die on us, Paul. I'd hate to lose you."

This time a tear did manage to escape from my eye, but I was quick to wipe it away before anyone noticed. "Damn it, you two …" I said, then let out a little laugh. "All right, I won't go getting myself killed … at least, not intentionally." We shared a small laugh, and the tension was eased.

I moved my eyes over them and around the bus, and eventually my eyes landed on Busujima-san. She was looking in this direction, but the second my eyes landed on her, she moved her eyes away, almost like she was afraid to make eye contact …

_Curious, _I thought. I didn't know what that look in her eyes had been before she'd turned them away, but it sure as hell wasn't a glare … _What the hell's up with her?_

Silence reigned once again after that. The only sounds that could be heard were coming from the outside of the bus, and they were anything but pleasant. There was the occasional bump against the front of the bus whenever it hit a zombie in the road, along with the cracks and splats that could only barely be heard when they were crushed beneath our wheels. Outside, the streets were war-torn. Every now and then, an explosion could be heard from somewhere outside, though I never once actually saw one. I saw a lot of flaming buildings, and there was a lot of smoke rising into the air both close and at a distance, but that was about it. One of the students at the back started talking to everyone, but I paid little attention.

Until he started shouting, anyway.

"I'm telling you!" the student, a blonde guy, yelled at everyone on the bus. "We'll only be in danger if we keep going like this! And anyway!" His shouting was beginning to annoy me. "Why should we have to go with Komuro and these guys? You're the only ones who decided to go back to town! Shouldn't we have looked for a safe place in the dorms or in the school!?"

The bus grazed the side of a car. The owner's yelling quickly faded into the distance.

"He's right …" said another male student, this one with pale skin and black hair. "If we keep this up, we're just putting ourselves in danger. We should hole ourselves up somewhere. Like the convenience store we just passed by …"

_Did we pass by a store …? _I asked in my mind as I hummed, staring out the window once again. I may have been looking out the window, but I really wasn't paying much attention to what we were passing by. If I was being honest, I was just glad to finally have the opportunity to get some rest, though all of the shouting prevented me from drifting off to sleep, as my yawning mouth was begging me to do. I tried my best to focus on what was outside only to see a man jumping out of a burning, crashing helicopter. _Shit, that's just fucking tragic …_

"It's not too late!" the blonde asshole continued. "Plus, I—"

That was when the bus suddenly jerked to a stop. The sudden stop caused me to fly forward, and while I managed to keep myself seated, unfortunately my forehead ended up colliding with the metal top of the seat in front of me. I immediately brought a hand up to it and found that I was bleeding slightly, but it was nothing to fuss over; it would probably dry up in a couple of minutes. I managed to focus myself enough to see that Marikawa-sensei was leaning out of her seat to glare at the people at the back of the bus.

"That's enough!" she yelled, fixing them with a glare. Because her seatbelt was still hooked up, it was squeezing her shirt as she leaned over, making her incredibly large breasts practically hang on display for all to see. I'm man enough to admit that it made me blush, though what with the pain in my head I didn't really notice it at the time. "I can't drive like this!" I wasn't the only one, either. Both Takashi and Kouta had their mouths slightly agape as their eyes fixed on Mawikawa-sensei's bosom.

The blonde guy who had been yelling seemed to struggle with his words for a moment. I turned to look at him, as did most of our group, but his eyes only seemed to zone in on Takashi. "What's your problem?" he asked aggressively. "What're you looking at? You wanna fight!?"

I mentally prepared myself to get up and start beating on him if he got too aggressive toward my friend.

"Then what do _you _want to do?" Busujima-san asked calmly.

The blonde guy turned his glare on her for a moment, which pissed me off a little, then pointed a finger at Takashi like he was accusing him of something. "I don't like him!" he yelled. "I don't like this guy! Acting like he's the big shit!"

I was silently seething. The urge to punch this guy was growing by the second.

"Where are you getting that?" asked Takashi. "When did I ever say anything to you?"

The blonde guy went silent for a moment. Then his teeth began to grind together and his fists clenched. "Why, you …!" he growled. He made a sudden lunge for Takashi, and I quickly grabbed up my golf club and stood up, but …

… Rei had beaten me to the punch.

She had slammed the side of her makeshift spear directly into the asshole's stomach. A small amount of vomit flew from his mouth, and he fell to his knees, groaning out in pain.

I put my golf club down and sat back in my seat. I continued to glare at the student as he writhed on the ground, however. I would have gladly knocked his lights out given half a chance. If it had been me in Rei's position, I probably would have gone for the face …

"You scum," Rei said to the blonde guy. She talked down to him, like she was talking to an insect she had crushed with her shoe.

The slow, clear sound of clapping took everyone's attention away from the downed student. It was Shidou. He was clapping his hands together with a wide, calculating grin on his face.

"Most impressive!" Shidou said loudly. I immediately levelled my glare at him. My ethics wouldn't have allowed me to leave him to die at the school, but as I looked at him then, I couldn't help but regret not trying to talk Takashi into leaving him as Rei had. There was just something … _wrong_ about him. "Superb teamwork, Komuro-kun, Miyamoto-san! But … if fights are going to break out like this, then it backs up my position." He walked near us at the front of the bus, leering. His eyes narrowed, and I _really _didn't like the look he had on his face. "That's why we need a leader."

"I take it there's only one candidate for the job?" Takagi-san asked, though it was very clear she knew the answer. We all did.

"I'm a teacher, Takagi-san," said Shidou, like he was talking to a small child. "Everyone else is a student. That alone speaks volumes in my merit."

"Maybe if it was a teacher who did his fucking job," I said. I made no effort to hide the disdain in my voice. He taught, yes, but he very rarely did anything else teachers did. The bullying that ran rampant in his classes was a prime example of that; as a matter of fact, I'd heard rumours that he often took part in it himself.

He ignored me entirely, instead turning to face the people at the back of the bus. "How about it, everyone?" he asked them. "If you go with me … I will do whatever it takes to keep you all alive, all right?"

The blonde student on the floor stopped huffing and puffing for breath and looked up at Shidou in clear admiration. The students at the back of the bus began cheering for Shidou, clapping for him. I genuinely couldn't believe what I was seeing. Surely they weren't _that _stupid …

Shidou took a bow for the students who were clapping for him, then turned back to us with open arms and a wide grin on his face. "… And there you have it. Through a majority vote, I have become the leader." The cocky way he said it finally cemented just how I felt about him – I hated the vile bastard. "Starting now …"

Rei abruptly turned away from Shidou and walked to the very front of the bus. "Sensei, open the doors … please open them!" she said to Marikawa-sensei, who was looking at her inquisitively. "I'm getting off!" Strangely, I was shocked but by no means surprised by this turn of events. Rei's hatred of Shidou had been very clear from the second we saw him running toward the bus. The thing that really surprised me, however, was that Marikawa-sensei actually _opened the doors _and let her _leave_. Takashi made to go after her, but she had already gone out the doors by the time he got there. "I won't have it! I don't want to be anywhere _near _that guy!"

"If she's saying she can't go along with the group, then …" Shidou sighed, placing a hand against his forehead in clearly fake disappointment and sadness, "… nothing we can do about it."

"You're just a model teacher, you know that?" I asked sarcastically. "It's so _inspiring_, the way you "look out" for your students. How could we _ever _have doubted your fantastic fucking leaderships skills?"

I actually thought I heard him growl at me for a moment. Then he coughed, I assume in an attempt to hide it.

A moment later, Takashi jumped off the bus after Rei. Admittedly, I had expected him to do so, knowing what he was like when it concerned her, and I also knew that if anyone could talk Rei back on the bus, it was him. That being said, I also knew it was an extremely bad idea for the both of them to be outside the bus, so a sense of worry began building up inside me.

"Just until town!" I heard Takashi saying. "Put up with him until we get to town. It's dangerous out there!"

"I told you you'd regret it!" Rei yelled.

"Either way, for now—!"

Whatever Takashi was going to say was cut off by the sound of screeching tires. Looking out the window, I saw another bus, this one out of control and rocketing toward where Takashi and Rei were standing at an incredibly fast pace.

"_Guys_, _fucking move_!" I shouted out the window of the bus. It was rare that I let my emotions appear in my voice, but I couldn't stop the panic and worry from entering as I shouted at my two friends.

I saw Takashi push Rei out of the way just before the other bus obscured my vision of them. The bus collided with a few abandoned cars, and the resulting explosion was deafening. There was ringing in my ears from the noise, and it almost seemed to shake the very earth beneath our feet … or the bus' wheels, as the case was. I managed to look out the window again, and saw that there was now a hulking wall of metal and fire separating us from Takashi and Rei.

Busujima-san stepped out of the bus and began to yell over the wreckage. "Komuro-kun, are you okay!?"

"Let's meet up … at the Eastern Police Station!" Takashi's voice was barely audible over the roar of the fire.

"What time!?" Busujima-san asked.

"Five!" Takashi yelled back. "If not today, then tomorrow at the same time!"

Busujima-san closed the doors quickly, then turned to Marikawa-sensei. "Nurse Marikawa!" she said. "We can't go this way any more."

"Okay!" Marikawa-sensei said as she started up the engines once again. "I'm going to go back and try a different route!" Once she'd gotten the bus up and started again, we were going back the way we came. The scenery wasn't any less depressing the second time around.

As the drive went on, I couldn't help but notice Kouta looking at me in some level of concern. "What?" I asked him.

"Nothing …" he said, but a look I gave him got him to continue. "It's just that, other than that conversation we had earlier, you haven't really said all that much for a while."

I shrugged. "I'm tired, and I didn't really see the need to," I said. "And besides," I took glances at both Busujima-san and Takagi-san, "I'm pretty sure you're the only one left on this bus who wouldn't complain about me speaking."

Takagi-san huffed and turned away from me, as was expected. But Busujima-san averted her eyes again, like she didn't want to make eye contact with me … I couldn't help but associate that sort of behaviour with … _shame_ … _But that _can't _be it, _I thought, shaking my head of such nonsense. _After all this time, why would she be ashamed now?_

Another yawn escaped my lips, so I tipped my head back and rested it on the back of my seat.

I fell asleep surprisingly quickly.

* * *

Saeko Busujima looks at the sleeping form of Paul Blake and feelings of shame and guilt begin to bubble up in her once again. She doesn't know if it is the fact that he had finally spoken back to her or the stress of the situation, but she has finally started feeling things that she knows she should have been feeling all along.

She _knows _her treatment of him was unfounded, but … she simply can't help it. He just … he reminds her _so much _of that incident that it is hard to look at him and not feel a spike of negative emotions. He had never argued against her before, so she had never felt particularly bad about it, though she has always known she should have, that he has done literally nothing to deserve her scorn. But again … she can't help what she feels.

She had listened to the conversation he had had with Takashi and Kouta earlier, though she had not initially meant to. The bus had been quiet, and once she had started hearing them she couldn't turn her attention away. That was when the guilt and shame had started to set in. Saeko just can't help but think that maybe she is part of the reason Paul considers himself expendable. She knows what kind of effect the way she treats him can have on a person, and … she isn't an idiot. She has _seen _the way he looks at her.

The look on his face every time she does something to him … the sheer look of _hurt _on his face … She had never really taken notice before, but now … she feels bad. She feels _awful_. And it isn't just the hurt looks, either … Saeko has seen how he looks at her when she isn't tormenting him …

_He looks surprisingly peaceful when he's sleeping, _she thinks to herself absently, not even realising she is thinking it.

It comes as a surprise to her that he can sleep at all. Kouta seems to be nodding off, but it has taken him quite a while. She knows she will sleep, too, when she finally decides to, but that is just because of how she is. She is strong, and she knows it. But it is always a surprise, albeit a pleasant one, when others display a similar strength.

Saeko decides she is going to try and be at least civil with Paul from now on. She doesn't know if she will be successful, what with the negative emotions bubbling up in her whenever she sees him, but she is going to give it her best. He doesn't deserve the treatment she has given him, and she is going to do her best to stop, but it is just so _hard_ …

Paul looks so much like _him_.

She clears the memories that are beginning to flood her mind, and decides to call it a night. She lays her head back for comfort's sake and closes her eyes.

It actually takes a little longer for her to get to sleep than it had taken Paul.

* * *

**That's the updated chapter three, Constant Readers. What do you think of it? I think it's better than the first time, but I'd love to hear your opinions on it. I thought that scene at the end, showing Saeko's point of view on her treatment of Paul, was a necessary touch that I really missed out on the first time around.**

**Now, before we go, here are the review responses!**

**xbox432: **Thank you. And yes, there will be differences to storyline eventually. Hell, there was one last chapter. I just like to take my time when it comes to _big _changes to the plot, really gives the Butterfly Effect some meaning.

**gta-anime45: **Well, there was a hint at what her problem is at the end of this chapter. You'll find out for definite eventually, though; just keep reading.

**A Shadow In Chains: **Thank you.

**adonxxxjuri: **Whoa! At least buy me a drink before saying something like that! lol. Thanks, anyway.

**SharpRevan: **Thank you. I'm glad I'm able to make it interesting enough for you to keep reading.

**Mr Beaver Buttington: **Well, I have been taking it rather slowly, and I'm glad that I did. Otherwise I wouldn't be nearly as good a writer as I am now.

**That's all she (or I) wrote, folks! I'll see you next time, Constant Readers!**


	4. Ditching the Douchebag

**Welcome to chapter four, Constant Readers! I hope you all enjoy!**

* * *

Ditching the Douchebag

I had woken up an hour or so before, and I had been bored out of my skull ever since. We had reached the bridge by the time I'd woken up, but apparently everyone in the city had the same idea as us, and the traffic had barely moved an inch since I had awoken. Marikawa-sensei sat at the wheel of the bus, sighing. The only way we could've been going slower is if we were going backwards. It also didn't help that Shidou was rambling on and on to his own brand of zombies at the back of the bus. I wasn't sure, but I think it was the honking of the horns outside that woke me up. Kouta didn't seem to be having much trouble, though; he was still snoring away and drooling.

"Rather than each of us acting on our own …" Shidou said to his drooling followers at the back of the bus, "… we should only act once we've secured a safe location. For example, checking on our families … should only proceed after we've moulded ourselves into an orderly group."

_Should've listened to Rei and let the manipulative son of a bitch die at the school, _I thought to myself as I glared at thin air, unwilling to turn around and look at the scene unfolding at the back of the bus. I could hear Takagi-san growling a little under her breath, which I am surprised I heard over Kouta's snoring. Takagi-san nudged Kouta with an elbow, and he began to stir.

"Hirano," Takagi-san said irritably as she nudged Kouta again, this time bringing him out of his sleep completely.

Kouta rubbed the sleep from his eyes. "Takagi-san, good morni—"

"I can't believe you can sleep at a time like this," she said, looking at him with disgust. "And wipe that drool off your chin."

"I can't help it …" Kouta said, moaning, but he did as she asked and wiped his chin with his blazer's sleeve.

"Look at this," said Takagi-san, gesturing out the window and at the slow build-up of traffic outside. The police were outside, too, directing the vehicles into specific lanes in order to keep the traffic jam as orderly as possible.

"We should get out of the city," Kouta said after looking at the traffic for a few moments.

"Cars aren't the _only _way to get out of here." Takagi-san pointed out the window, up into the sky. Despite not being part of the conversation, I looked anyway, and saw exactly what she was getting at.

"The airport," I said suddenly. Takagi-san and Kouta snapped their heads in my direction, probably having not expected me to get involved with the conversation.

"There's also the port." Takagi-san nodded her head in agreement, quickly recovering from her brief moment of surprise. "Anyone can see that the city isn't a great place to be at the moment, so there's probably a lot of people trying to run away to some island. Or to some isolated place where there's plenty of armed forces."

"Like Okinawa?" asked Kouta.

"If there's a suitable means of dealing with 'them,' even Hokkaido would do … The planes are headed in those directions for the most part."

"We should go there, too," Kouta said enthusiastically.

"It's too late for us," Takagi-san said with her famous "you are an idiot" glare. "Even if they've managed to keep 'them' out of areas where there are Self Defence Forces or lots of American troops, they've likely started implementing strict entry protocols. Actually, I take it back. _Everywhere on Earth _is probably like that already … If contact with people you didn't know meant letting 'them' in, wouldn't you do the same?"

"I'd coop myself up in my house," Kouta said.

I released a small amount of laughter. "Yeah, I know _you _would," I said, making no attempt to hide the humour in my tone. "But you'd basically be trapping yourself. One noise too many, and you'd have an army of dead cannibals bashing at your door twenty four-seven." My tone turned a little grimmer. "Plus, if you really look at the situation, you're basically fucked no matter where you try to hide. This shit spread across basically the entire planet in a matter of hours. In order for it to have spread that quickly, _especially _when the zombies are as slow as they are, it would've had to spring up in basically every major city in the world at once. The odds are that, wherever the hell those planes are taking people, they won't find any peace there."

"… Well, aren't you just a ray of sunshine?" Takagi-san asked me. Then she sighed. "You are right, though. But more to the point at hand … What if everyone on Earth started thinking that way, if they all start preserving only the minimum of community it takes for them to survive?"

"You really are a brain, you know that, Takagi?" Kouta said.

"What are you talking about?" Takagi-san asked him. Then she pointed toward Shidou and the people at the back of the bus. "He's already made himself head of this operation. I don't know if he knows it himself or not … but it barely took half a day, see?"

"Shall I show him the door?" Kouta asked, raising his nail gun to do just that.

"Don't," I said. "He's got all those mindless cultists on his side, so even if we helped we'd be outnumbered." I didn't particularly want to survive the zombies only to get killed by a group of people who somehow managed to be even more idiotic, you know?

"More importantly," said Takagi-san. "We should be thinking about how we're going to survive. With people we can trust … urgh. If Komuro were here, I'd be able to ask _him _about this."

"Takagi-san, you _like _Komuro," Kouta said in a teasing fashion.

I snorted with suppressed laughter.

"Don't be ridiculous!" Takagi-san exclaimed in denial.

That made me laugh even harder. I only stopped when I realised that Busujima-san and Marikawa-sensei were staring at the three of us. Marikawa-sensei looked to be in some strange state of happiness, and she wasn't at the wheel any more, probably because of the lack of movement in the traffic. Busujima-san kept a perfectly straight face, though there was no sense of hatred when her eyes landed on me. That was new. It was rather pleasant, too, actually.

Takagi-san coughed into her hand awkwardly and stood up. "Good timing," she said.

"Yeah, they arrived just in time to save you from all that blood rushing to your face," I said, grinning maliciously.

"Shut it, Blake!" she yelled at me. Kouta looked like he was trying not to laugh.

Any more conversation we might have had on this topic was brought to an end when Shidou, the bastard, started talking a lot louder than he had been before.

"This is not the time to forget our pride as members of Fujimi High School!" he said to his drooling followers. "And it goes to show that when Miyamoto-san and Komuro-kun left the bus, they weren't fit to be part of our group!"

"This is seriously bad," said Takagi-san.

"We must unite to survive!" Shidou continued to yell.

"Indeed," said Busujima-san. "It sounds like an invitation to a new religion."

"We must combine our strength to make it through these hard times!"

"It's not 'like,' it downright _is _a new religion," said Takagi-san. "We're witnessing the beginning of the Order of Shidou."

"You'd have to be a bit of a dumb cunt to listen to anything that comes out of his mouth," I said, not even bothering to hide my distaste for the man. "And they are, I mean … just _look _at them. They're eating from the palm of his fucking hand."

"The way the roads are, we have to ditch the bus and make a break for it," said Busujima-san. "We have to cross Onbetsu Bridge somehow and get to the East Police Station … I promised Komuro-kun."

I felt a sudden wave of jealousy overtake me. It was brief, but it was there. Busujima-san hadn't even _met _Takashi before all of this started happening, but apparently she already had a lot more respect and care for him than she ever had for me. I could tell my emotions were showing on my face, as Kouta was giving me a look, and even Takagi-san was taking little glances at me. I did my best to get my facial expression as neutral as possible. I didn't like showing what I was feeling on my face.

"You're awfully worried about Komuro, aren't you?" Takagi-san asked her. "What about your family?"

"I'm worried, but my family is just my dad and he's in a dojo abroad," Busujima-san said, smiling. "So right now, the only thing I have to protect other than my promise to Komuro-kun is my life. And my dad … taught me to always uphold promises, even if it means my life."

"So, um, Takagi-san, where is your house?" asked Marikawa-sensei.

"It's with Komuro's across Onbetsu bridge," said Takagi-san.

"My parents aren't in this area," said Kouta. "So as long as I'm with you, Takagi-san, I'll go anywhere."

While Takagi-san had a little freak-out, I couldn't help but smile a little. Takagi-san had been … less than kind to Kouta, to put it mildly, yet he still openly expressed how much he cared about her. I was almost envious of his ability to be so honest about his feelings even though there were no signs that they were reciprocated.

"Where is your family, Hirano-kun?" Busujima-san asked him.

"My dad's a jeweller, so he's on a trip to Holland to buy stones," said Kouta. "And my mum's a fashion designer, so she's always in Paris."

There was silence. We all went silent from sheer shock at his family background.

"What era does a background like that come from!?" Takagi-san finally managed to yell.

"If this were a manga, your father would be the captain of a foreign passenger boat, I imagine," said Marikawa-sensei, laughing.

"… That was my grandpa." Kouta rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly as we all fell silent again. "My grandma was a violinist."

"P-perfect," said Takagi-san, groaning.

"Well, the more you know," I said, shrugging, though I was just as baffled as the others were. I had known Kouta before all this, and even _I _didn't know he had this kind of family background. It was really quite a marvel.

"What about you, Blake-kun?" Marikawa-sensei looked at me. Then she seemed to freeze up, like she was realising something, and I knew she had remembered. "I … I'm sorry …"

"It's fine," I said quickly. I shuffled uncomfortably in my seat. It felt like my stomach was caught in my throat. I glanced at the others, who were staring at me inquisitively. "It's, uh …" I cleared my throat. "It's complicated. Let's just say that I have no family I am capable … _not that I intend to _… of reaching." The _not that I intend to _was whispered under my breath, and I was confident that no one had heard it … though Busujima-san was giving me a rather curious look …

"So what do we do?" Marikawa-sensei asked us, smiling, though it was a little tense now. "I want to go with you guys, too."

"Are you sure?" asked Takagi-san.

"My parents aren't around any more, and the rest of my family is far off," said Marikawa-sensei. She looked to the back of the bus cautiously, and when she next spoke it was in a hushed voice. "And I know it's not nice of me to say this, but … I think Shidou-sensei is kind of a douchebag." That got a round of giggles out of all of us.

"What's going on with everybody?" came Shidou's voice. He was looking toward us now. "We need everyone to agree to cooperate here …"

"No thanks, Shidou-sensei," said Takagi-san, cutting him off. All of us stood from our seats. "We've got our own goals in mind! This isn't some field trip, we have no obligation to stay with you!"

"I see …" Shidou said in a calculative tone. He had a smirk on his face that I didn't like one bit. He put his hands together in the same fashion as a stereotypical evil villain would. "If you've decided that, then go ahead and do as you please, Takagi-san. After all, Japan's a free country! However …" he licked his lips perversely, "… we can't have that with you, Marikawa-sensei! It would be too great a loss if the only doctor were to walk out on us in our current predicament." He began to slowly walk toward the front of the bus, all the while speaking in an incredibly smooth tone of voice. "How about it? Won't you stay? There are students here who rely on you, too. Now, Marikawa-sensei. Just as soon as we secure ourselves a location, Takagi-san and her friends can call on you when they need …" He was suddenly cut off when a tiny projectile flew past him and left a scratch on his right cheek – it was a nail. The nail embedded itself in one of the seats near the back, leading one of the students to crying out a little in fear. Kouta still had his nail gun aimed at Shidou. "H-Hirano-kun?" Shidou looked like he was starting to panic. "Y-you're not a violent student like that …"

"Do you have any _idea _how many people I killed at school!?" Kouta yelled at Shidou, his face contorted in a rage I had never seen in him before. "And you've done _nothing _but mock me from the very beginning! I've put up with it this long! All this time, I've put up with it! I put up with it all this time because I wanted to live a normal life! But I don't need to do that any more!" The scowl on his face morphed into a twisted, sadistic grin. "Normalcy has no meaning to me! That's why … I … I can _kill_. I can even kill the living." He had his nail gun trained on Shidou the entire time, never moving it so much as an inch.

"H-Hirano-kun …" said Shidou. He was shaking, sweating bullets, and he sounded scared. It was incredibly satisfying. "Th-that's not …"

"Busujima-senpai, get off first please," said Kouta, glancing back at us. "I'll bring up the rear."

Busujima-san walked over to the doors of the bus, which had now been opened by Marikawa-sensei. Busujima-san stopped by the door for a moment, causing the wind to blow at her torn skirt, which gave me quite the view of her panties. I blushed up a storm, but luckily for me, everyone else was too distracted to notice. "Spoken like a true man, Hirano-kun," she said, then jumped out of the bus. Marikawa-sensei and Takagi-san were next, and I got out just before Kouta did. As I got out, I saw Busujima-san's eyes narrowed on me briefly, before she seemed to shake it off and go back to her neutral expression.

_Something's changed, _I couldn't help but think, though I didn't quite believe it. _But this is still a problem. I'm going to have to deal with it sooner or later, otherwise this animosity between us is going to get one – or both – of us killed._

"So, which way?" I asked once we were all off the bus.

"First, we figure out where Onbetsu bridge is," said Takagi-san.

"It might be blocked off," said Kouta. "This traffic isn't exactly normal."

"Only one way to find out," I said.

We began to make our way in the rough direction of the bridge. We walked in relative silence, careful not to attract any unwanted attention. We were walking down a reasonably empty street when a kind of metallic growl/roar reached my ears. It was a rather easy noise to place.

"Does anyone else hear an engine?" I asked the others.

Apparently they did, and we all started looking around for the source of the noise. Barely a few moments later, a motorbike stopped a little way down the street from us. I squinted at it, trying to see who was getting off, and a grin worked its way onto my face when I saw exactly who had just rejoined us.

Rei practically jumped off the bike and barrelled into Marikawa-sensei, giving her a large hug. "Sensei!" she exclaimed in joy.

Marikawa-sensei returned the hug enthusiastically. "Oh my, Miyamoto-san!" she cheered just as happily as Rei had, if not more so. "And Komuro-kun, too!"

"I'm so happy to see you're okay, Komuro-kun," said Busujima-san, and I could already feel my facial expression souring in jealousy. It was petty, I knew, but I simply couldn't help it.

Takashi glanced at me, and a hesitant smile appeared on his face. "Same to you, Busujima-senpai," he said. He sounded a little tense.

Takagi-san started tugging on Takashi's sleeve. That irritated expression was back on her face. "Forgetting someone?" she asked.

"G-glad to see you're okay, Takagi," said Takashi, smiling nervously. "You, too, Hirano. Paul." I smiled at him and nodded, and I'm pretty sure Kouta did the same.

"… We haven't been able to find a way across," Busujima-san said to Takashi.

"Ditto," said Takashi.

"What about farther up?" Takagi-san asked. "This area's got shoreline protection installation so we can't cross, but maybe that's not the case upstream. Remember, there was that kid in elementary school who was fooling around and got carried away by the current?"

"Yeah … but I wonder," said Takashi. "With all the recent rainfall, the river's risen …"

"Excuse me …" said Marikawa-sensei. "I think it'd be better if we rested for today."

"R-rested?" asked Kouta.

I was slightly baffled, too, honestly. I thought the opportunities to rest would be few and far between during this situation, so I wasn't entirely sure where Marikawa-sensei suggested we go to be rested for the night. Speaking of which, the sun was setting, so it wouldn't be long before we would be out in the dark.

"It's going to be dark within the hour," said Marikawa-sensei. "And when it gets dark … if we run into any of 'them,' even Busujima-san would have trouble, see?"

"Where do you propose we get rested up?" I asked her. "I don't know if you've noticed, but we are in the middle of a street."

"We could raid the castle," said Busujima-san.

There were two things about that sentence that surprised me. One, Busujima-san had responded to something I said _without _being aggressive about it. Two, she appeared to be making an actual _joke_. I didn't know whether it was due to my surprise or if I thought it was genuinely funny, but I found myself chuckling at her suggestion. Takashi and Kouta laughed, too, so it had to have been at least relatively funny.

"We wouldn't be able to protect it with so few of us," said Takashi, trying not to smile.

"Um, excuse me, but I have a place we can use," said Marikawa-sensei. "It's walking distance from here."

"Your man's pad," Takagi-san asked, smirking.

Marikawa-sensei blushed up a storm and waved her hands in front of her face in denial. "N-no!" she said. "It's the home of a girl friend of mine. She's got so much work, she's always flying from one place to another, so she left me her key to air out her home every once in a while."

"Is it a condo?" asked Kouta. "Can you get a good view of the area from it?"

"Uh, sure," said Marikawa-sensei. "It's on the riverfront, and it's a maisonette with a convenience store right next door. A-also, she left me her car. It's built like a tank."

"Well, we'll need the transport either way," said Busujima-san.

"Today has me dead tired," Takagi-san said, groaning. "I just wanna shower while there's still power."

"G-good idea," Kouta said, a lecherous grin on his face. The second the words exited his mouth, Takagi-san kicked him in the face. I winced in sympathy.

Takashi climbed onto the motorbike again. "Shizuka-sensei, hop on the back," he said.

"Oh, right," said Marikawa-sensei. She carefully climbed onto the back of the bike and wrapped her arms around Takashi.

"I'm going with Sensei to check it out," said Takashi. He looked at Busujima-san. "Busujima-senpai, you take it from here." She nodded in agreement, and then Takashi sped off on the bike.

I could see how tightly Marikawa-sensei was holding on to Takashi, and it amused me to think about how much he must have been blushing in that moment.

And so we waited for Takashi and Marikawa-sensei to return.

* * *

By the time Takashi and Marikawa-sensei had come back and taken us all to the house, it was the dark of the night. As we entered through the gate, I found myself awestruck by what I saw. In front of the house sat a military model Humvee!

"Your friend is very well connected, isn't she?" I asked. This was a _lot _more than I had expected when she'd talked about a car.

" 'They' probably wouldn't be able to make it over the fence," said Rei as she looked at the large metal fence surrounding the building. "So we should be able to sleep with peace of mind."

"Takagi, do you have anything we could use?" Takashi asked Takagi-san. "We have a gun, but we're not sure how good we are."

"Huh!? A gun!?" Kouta asked in excitement.

I sighed. "You really did it now, Takashi …" I said. Though I had a fond smile on my face.

"I'll let you play with it later," Takashi said to Kouta. "But for now …"

Some moaning resounded around the area. I looked around and saw that a group of zombies were congregating around the gate, probably because of the noise we were making during that conversation. There weren't a lot of them, but if left long enough they could easily become a problem.

"Komuro!" Takagi-san said, handing Takashi a crowbar. "Are we going to be okay like this?"

"Yeah, this is perfect," said Takashi. "Stay back." Takagi-san and Marikawa-sensei stepped back. "Don't forget to cover each other's backs! Let's go!"

Takashi, Rei, Kouta, Busujima-san and I then all charged the zombies. Kouta stayed at the back, shooting the zombies down with his nail gun. I simply swung my golf club with deadly precision, breaking undead skulls open and sending their brains all over the floor. I paid little attention to what the others were doing. There was no more running away. We were attacking first to protect our new home. Any and all fear switched off as soon as the fight started. It had only been a little over a day, and the foundations were already laid for the person I would become thanks to the rise of the zombie apocalypse.

In this temporary shelter of ours, a lot of things would change. And, for me at least, they changed for the better.

* * *

**I hope you enjoyed the updated version of this chapter. As you can see, there is still some animosity between Paul and Saeko, but true to her thoughts last chapter, Saeko is trying to be at least a little bit friendly now. I'm quite glad I've chosen to do it like this – the sudden turnaround in their relationship in the original version was pretty rushed, looking back on it.**

**See you next time Constant Readers!**


	5. Guns! Guns! Guns!

**Chapter five is here, Constant Readers! I truly hope you all enjoy! This edited version will be building on the development we've already had thus far in my edited chapters, so expect things to go slightly differently than they did before.**

**Let's begin.**

* * *

Guns! Guns! Guns!

The sound of a dog barking loudly echoed around outside. Inside the apartment we were staying in, however, some very different noises were reaching the ears of Takashi, Kouta and I. The sound of the girls in the bathroom, to be more specific. The noises they were making were quite … colourful, to say the least. If you were to ask me to describe exactly what it sounded like, I would have to tell you it sounded a lot like they were making a lesbian porno in there.

The three of us were currently in the process of breaking into a locker we had found in the bedroom. Said bedroom contained a king-sized bed and a large TV. There were also two lockers, placed side by side with each other. We had already managed to break in to one of them, and had found an abundance of ammunition for different kinds of guns, along with a quiver and some arrows. It had become very clear to us very quickly just why the owner of the house had hidden these things. I wouldn't particularly want to be arrested for keeping things like this lying around, either.

"They sound like they're having a ball in there," said Takashi. He looked less than pleased at the noise the girls were making.

"I think we should test that theory and sneak a peak," said Kouta. Before all this, I never would have guessed that he had such a perverted streak in him.

"And I think you're a fucking lunatic," I said. Marikawa-sensei wasn't really the problem; she was too soft-hearted to do much more than panic. But the other three girls would rip us limb from limb if they caught us peeping in on them, and it would _not _be done with mercy. Just the _thought _of what Busujima-san might do to me if she caught me in a position like that made me shiver in fear for my life.

"Paul's right," said Takashi. "We're too young to die." I noticed Takashi smiling at me a little.

It was probably because I had been a lot more conversational since we'd gotten there. It was one thing for me to get involved with group discussions, but it was another thing entirely for me to interact on a social level. To be completely honest, it was only because it was these two in there with me. I mostly found myself only truly comfortable around those two – maybe Rei a little bit, but not as much as Takashi and Kouta. We were close friends, don't get me wrong, but I was mostly friends with her through Takashi and Hisashi. I didn't really speak to her when those two weren't around.

What I had never told Takashi and Kouta was that the reason I was more comfortable around them was because they could understand me to a degree. Takashi had been dumped by Rei, which had emotionally destroyed him, and Kouta had been bullied mercilessly by most of the people at school. On one level or another, both of them were as messed up as me to some extent.

"If there's nothing in here, I'm gonna have a headache," said Takashi.

"They weren't hiding a shit load of ammo in their locker for kicks," I said.

"Yeah, there'll be something in here," Kouta said in agreement. "Where there's ammo, there's bound to be …"

"Screw it," said Takashi. He took his crowbar and stuck the pointed end into the crack of the locker's door. "Let's just do this."

Kouta and I grabbed on to the crowbar along with Takashi and started pulling, trying to force the locker open. With all three of us pulling on it, it didn't take long for the door to give and fly open. Unfortunately, it happened rather suddenly, and ended with Takashi, Kouta and I falling to the floor on our asses. I sat up, rubbing the lower half of my back, which had gone numb, but paused when I saw exactly what was in the locker.

"Hey … Hirano …" said Takashi. He was sitting up and staring into the locker, too.

"Seriously, Kouta … you've _got _to see this …" I said.

Kouta sat up, rubbing his head, and looked in the locker. Then he shot to his feet so quickly that I nearly toppled onto my ass again. "I _knew _they'd be here!" he exclaimed in joy. He had a grin on his face that looked like it'd be more at home on The Joker.

When Takashi next spoke, his voice was filled with bewilderment. "Shizuka-sensei said that this was a friend of hers, but …"

"… just what kind of friend has stuff like _this _in their bedroom?" I said, finishing the thought for him. The locker contained a shotgun, a sniper rifle, a semi-automatic rifle, and a crossbow. _We've hit the fucking jackpot! _I cheered in my mind, a grin breaking out on my face. It looked like surviving would be a hell of a lot easier from here on in.

Kouta picked up the rifle and looked at it like it was a gift from God. "A Springfield M1A1 Super Mach," he said. "Though it's only semi-automatic. Then again, fully automatics from the M-14 Series only waste bullets."

"Uh, Hirano," said Takashi awkwardly.

"The magazine's got twenty rounds in it!" Kouta continued. "This is illegal in Japan! _Illegal_." He said the last part with a slightly demented giggle.

"Hirano …" Takashi said again, sounding concerned.

"I wouldn't bother, Takashi," I said to him. "You so much as show Kouta a _BB _gun and he goes off on a tangent. Trust me, we're not getting him back for a while."

Kouta picked up the sniper rifle and continued with his gun-based tangent. "A Knight's SR-25 Sniper … I swear. You can't get these things in Japan. Whoever owns it completely remodelled it." While he'd been talking about the sniper rifle, Takashi had picked up the shotgun and was inspecting it inquisitively. Kouta didn't really notice, instead focusing on the last item in the locker. "The last one's a crossbow. It's a descendent of the kind Robin Hood used. A Barnett Wildcat C5. A famous English hunting crossbow."

"I'll be having that, then," I said, taking the crossbow from the locker and posing with it. "Daryl Dixon would be _so _proud of me."

Takashi and Kouta chuckled at the reference. Then Kouta finally noticed Takashi holding the shotgun.

"That's an Ithaca M-37 Riot Shotgun!" he said. "It's a super deadly shotgun designed by the Americans. It was even used in the Vietnam War." Takashi looked intrigued. He experimentally aimed the shotgun in front of him, pumping it. Kouta then dived to the floor in a slight panic. "NEVER POINT THAT THING AT SOMEONE! EVEN UNLOADED! The only ones you can point it at are …"

"… 'Them,' " Takashi finished for him. "I really hope they're the only ones …"

A few minutes passed by in complete silence after that. The joyful mood in the room had died the second Takashi had uttered that last sentence.

As the silence reigned, I noticed one last thing tucked into the bottom of the locker. It was a small box, too small to hold any kind of gun. Curious, I picked it up and opened it. Inside were a set of eight small … _things_. I really didn't know what they were.

"Hey, Kouta," I said, getting his attention. I showed him the box. "What are these?"

He looked into the box, and another wide grin spread across his face. He took out two of the things and held them in his hand. "These are combat earplugs," he said. "The military use them to avoid going deaf from exposure to all the gunfire." He put the two in his hand inside his ears. "See?"

"Huh … cool," I said. I took two out of the box and pocketed them. I may have planned on using the crossbow, but it was better to be safe.

Kouta took the earplugs out. "You see how there are two sides?," he asked. "One side blocks out the gunfire but lets you hear people speaking, and the other just blocks out noise entirely."

"Huh …" said Takashi. He took a pair, too. "Wait, but there's only four sets. There are seven of us."

"This whole locker has been too good to be true," I said, sighing. "There had to be a downside somewhere."

After that, things descended into silence once again. Kouta started taking the bullets from the boxes they were in and inserting them into the empty magazines. It looked like a long and slightly complimented process, and the only reason I wasn't helping out was because I had no idea how to do that sort of thing. I took the multitude of arrows that were in the locker and put them all in the quiver, which I then slung over my shoulder. I felt quite nice knowing that I now had the badass archer look.

"Can at least _one _of you two help me?" Kouta asked, sounding slightly irritated. "Loading these things in is a pain in the ass."

"Did you learn this from an airsoft gun?" Takashi asked him.

I snorted in laughter at Takashi's question. "Takashi, my friend, you couldn't be further from the truth," I said.

"I got this from _real _guns," said Kouta, grinning.

"You've handled a real gun before!?" Takashi asked in disbelief.

"When I went to the States …" said Kouta. "I studied under a civilian militia, the Black Hawks, for a month." Kouta grinned at the memory.

Takashi gave a small, nervous laugh. "That side of you … is really perfect," he said awkwardly. "I'm just glad you don't hate me." His awkward smile turned into a small frown. "Anyway, what kind of person is this friend of Shizuka-sensei's? The guns here have got to be illegal."

"Not if you buy the parts separately," I said. "But if someone found out she'd assembled them like this, she'd be in _big _trouble." I was silently grateful that no one had found out about them. If this woman had gotten into trouble over the guns, we wouldn't now have a major advantage in our fight against the zombies.

"There's no way Shizuka-sensei would befriend an S.A.T. member," said Kouta.

"So police can get away with anything they want?" asked Takashi, distaste showing on his face.

"We're pretty sure we're not dealing with your average person here, right?" Kouta asked rhetorically. "Unmarried policemen and women have to live in the dorms, I thought, so if whoever it is has a pad like this, then they must have rich parents … or a rich boyfriend, or she took some kind of bribe."

The squealing of the girls from the bathroom rose in volume.

"Christ," I said, sighing and rubbing my head in annoyance. "It's like they went in there and went, 'Let's make as much noise as possible!' They're just _begging _to be eaten, aren't they?"

"It should be fine," Takashi said, unconcerned. He walked out onto the balcony and looked out over the city with a pair of binoculars we had found in the apartment. " 'They' react to sound. But the loudest thing right now is …" Even at this distance, we could hear all the people on the bridge. The honking of the car horns and the yells of the people were easy to hear, there was so much of it. I then understood what Takashi was saying. No matter how far away we were, the people on that bridge were making a hell of a lot more noise than the girls ever could. "This feels like a movie." Takashi handed Kouta the binoculars so that he could look at the city around us.

"There's a scene like this in _Apocalypse Now— _What's that?" Kouta asked. "There's a strange group across the way …"

Takashi started to flip through channels on the TV, eventually coming to a stop on a news channel that showed a group of rather loud protesters.

"Don't allow the police to tyrannise us!" said a man whom I assumed was the lead protester. He was rough looking with a few missing teeth. "We condemn the spread of the murder syndrome brought on by the biological weapons developed by the government and the US!"

Also on the screen, directly in front of the camera, was a female reporter. "Right now, a group of protesters have started chanting against the bridge blockade installed by the police!" The reporter had to shout to be heard over the protesters. "It's not quite clear who this organisation is …"

"Murder syndrome …" Takashi muttered.

"They must be talking about 'them,' " said Kouta.

"What a bunch of fucking idiots," I said. They were talking about this like it was some kind of disease. What kind of disease could do something like this?

"You said it, man," Takashi said in agreement. "There's no way any kind of modern science can explain why dead people are walking around and eating people."

"Which means that group's a bunch of bona fide fanatics," said Kouta. "Either that or they're sick in the head. Leftists, you know?"

"Leftists tend to be fanatical and sick in the head." Takashi nodded.

"Bunch of racist bastards is what they are," I said.

"I'm surprised to hear you two talk like that," Kouta said, smiling.

"Some of my mum's colleagues are Left-Wing Activists even now," said Takashi. He huffed in annoyance. "They were Antiwar Pacificsts who are the type to see bullying in schools and then ignore it …"

"And I just don't like racists," I said, shrugging.

"What's your mum do again?" Kouta asked Takashi.

"She's a teacher," said Takashi. "She's got a class of first-graders at Onbetsu Elementary across the river. So long as she has her students, she won't run away … she's not that kind of person." A thought seemed to occur to him. "What about you guys? I don't know about your parents."

"My dad's a jeweller and my mum's a fashion designer," said Kouta.

Takashi looked just as surprised as we had been hearing this on the bus. He shook it off quickly, though, and looked at me. "What about you, Paul?" he asked.

I froze up again. "Doesn't matter," I said. Rather than trying to give some kind of answer, no matter how vague, I was now trying to avoid questions about my parents entirely. I _hated _it when this subject was brought up, hated it with a passion. I knew they weren't doing it intentionally, but the others were making it so hard to shove those memories to the back of my mind.

"Huh?" said Takashi. Kouta looked a little uncomfortable, probably remembering how I'd reacted to this same line of questioning on the bus. "What do you m—"

"I said it _doesn't matter_," I said, more pointedly. I didn't like it, being reminded of a childhood where I never interacted with people outside the house because I was never allowed to leave, other than for school. I had been free of my father since I was fourteen, and I intended to keep it that way, memory and all. "Can we just drop it?"

I turned my attention back to the TV, but the images on there weren't exactly uplifting. A woman was being eaten alive by her young daughter, all the while swearing blind that she was still alive and well. The zombies were approaching the police, who had finally started shooting the damn things. It was once again hammered in just how fucked the situation was.

"The vile authorities are turning on the people!" yelled the lead protester. "They're reacting with violence indiscriminately!"

The man was a complete idiot. Was he _really _so blind to not see how bad the situation really was?

A police officer came up behind the protester and put a hand on his shoulder, which was quickly shaken off. "Please leave the area immediately," said the officer. "You are in danger here."

"That's bullshit!" the protester spat. "You're just trying to cover up the plot between the government and the US!"

"I'll tell you once more," said the officer, reaching a hand down and resting it on his gun holster. "By the final orders of the government and HQ, I am to take whatever action necessary to keep the peace." He removed his revolver from its holster and pressed the barrel against the protester's forehead. "It's hardly legal, but an order is an order." He pulled the trigger, and with the _bang _of the gunshot, the protester's blood and brain exited through the new hole in his head, and he collapsed to the floor, lifeless. The TV screen went straight to static.

"… Everything's falling apart," said Takashi. "This is bad."

"We'd better act fast," said Kouta.

"No can do." Takashi shook his head. "Until it gets light out, we'd be an easy meal for 'them.' "

We went quiet, and then out of the corner of my eye I saw a pair of arms snaking around Takashi's neck from behind. I tensed up, as did he, but we settled down a few moments later when we realised it was just Marikawa-sensei. I wasn't close to her, but I could still smell the alcohol, and I suddenly wanted to leave the room. I looked over and saw that Marikawa-sensei was wearing absolutely nothing but a _towel_, which didn't exactly cover up much of anything. My face heated up, and I felt it safe to assume I was roughly the same colour as the blood in my veins. It was worse for Takashi, though; she was hugging him from behind, her massive breasts pressing against the back of his head. She began to kiss Takashi's cheek repeatedly, practically singing out his name between kisses.

"S-Sensei, are you drunk?" Takashi said, stuttering.

"A little," said Marikawa-sensei, a seductive smirk plastering her face. "Just a little." She looked toward Kouta, who was even redder than I was, and began to crawl across the bed toward him. "_Kouta-chaaaaan_." Kouta's smile and blush only increased upon hearing her say his name.

" 'Chan'?" asked Kouta. "Um, well …" He laughed awkwardly. Marikawa-sensei reached the place where he was, leaned up, and planted a long, sensual kiss on his cheek. The amount of blood that was in Kouta's face then burst forth through his nose.

Marikawa-sensei licked her lips in satisfaction, then turned her eyes to me.

"Well, I'm out," I said quickly. I stood up and ran out of the room. Just before I went out the door, I turned back and said, "Good luck, Takashi!" There was absolutely _no way _I was going to stay in there with a _drunk _Marikawa-sensei. Nothing against her or anything, but I wasn't particularly fond of being around anyone if they were drunk. Some of the worst days of my life involved a drunk man …

I got out of the room, went down some stairs, and came across Rei. She was barely dressed, and an awful lot of skin was showing, but I did my best to ignore that and focus on what she was saying.

"Where's Takashi?" she asked me. I could smell the alcohol on her breath. It wasn't as bad as Marikawa-sensei, but it was still pretty strong.

My distaste for alcohol was put on hold for a moment, however, as I saw a golden opportunity. "He has his hands full," I said, a grin spreading across my face. Then I carried on walking downstairs.

As I made my way down the stairs, I was silently amused about the fact that I had just caused Takashi a little bit of trouble with some potential righteous feminine fury. Though, thinking about the fact that Marikawa-sensei and Rei were drunk, I couldn't help but feel a little parched, so I decided to head to the kitchen and see if the owner of this place kept anything non-alcoholic in the fridge. I got into the kitchen, and my good mood died a little. Not entirely, but I _could _feel a sudden tension in the room.

Busujima-san was there, cooking something in a pot on the stove. While there was a lot less hostility than there had been before, there was still a certain air of awkwardness in the room. I made a split-second decision that I couldn't let this continue, or else things might end badly for one or both of us.

"A bit of a weird time to be hitting the booze, isn't it?" I asked conversationally.

"I haven't had any," she said. She wasn't being hostile, which was good, but there was still a certain indifference to her voice.

"Ah," I said, nodding. "Okay … It's just, er … a bit of a dangerous time to be drinking, what with the zombies and all."

"Which is why I haven't had any," she said, a little more forcefully this time.

"Okay." I sighed. Time to man up for a change. "What is this?" I gestured between her and myself. "Why do you always act like this around me? 'Cause I don't have a fucking clue."

She seemed caught off guard. She stopped what she was doing and actually turned to face me before she next spoke. "Well … it's just …" She seemed to be struggling with her words. She had that look on her face again, that look that was so full of shame and guilt. I suddenly felt bad for putting her on the spot like this.

"You know what?" I said, holding my hands up. "I don't need to know. You haven't been so bad about it for the last day or so, and I thank you for that, but I just think we need to get along better. I don't know if you've noticed, but we are in a spot of bother. This personal vendetta of yours, which I _really _don't understand, is going to get one or both of us killed if you start acting all hostile in a combat situation." I sighed, feeling like I was being way too harsh at the moment. "Whatever I did to deserve all this, I am _truly _sorry. But we're in a survival situation now, _together_, and we can't afford to hold grudges against each other. I'm sorry if I've pissed you off, but we need to start getting along."

I turned around to walk out, intent on giving her time to think about what I'd said.

"You're right." I paused and turned around in surprise at her shockingly fast response. That look on her face … it was even more remorseful now. "And you have nothing to apologise for; you've done nothing to deserve the way I've been treating you. It's just …" She struggled for words again, like she wanted to explain but couldn't for some reason.

"It's okay," I said. "You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I just want all _this _to end. Best case scenario, I hope we can be friends, Busujima-san."

She was silent for a few moments, then she smiled at me, and my heart fluttered in my chest. "Well, then, my friends call me Saeko, Blake-san," she said.

I smiled back. "And _my _friends call me Paul, Saeko-san," I said. My brain seemed to catch up to the situation and my eyes shot downward for a moment. What I saw made my face heat up even more than seeing Marikawa-sensei in a towel ever could. "Erm, Saeko-san … what are you wearing?"

She was wearing absolutely nothing but an apron and a thong.

She grabbed the edges of the apron and pulled them out a little, causing me to blush even more. "Nurse Marikawa's friend didn't have anything in my size," she said. "I'm wearing this until the laundry's done. Though I guess it is a little too revealing, huh?"

"Oh, no, absolutely not," I said, waving my hands in front of my face. "I … I hadn't even _noticed_, to be honest."

"Right." I couldn't really tell due to my state of embarrassment, but I thought she looked amused at my reaction. "That's why you asked about it."

I laughed awkwardly, then cleared my throat. "Well, I'd better, er … get back to keeping watch with the other two upstairs," I said.

"Ah, yes, you, Komuro-kun and Hirano-kun are keeping watch," she said. She smiled again. "I'd like you to know how grateful I am for that."

"It's … it's really nothing," I said. "I'd, er … I'd better get back to it." I turned, walked out, then remembered why I had gone in there to begin with. I walked back in, chuckling awkwardly when Saeko-san raised an eyebrow at me. I opened the fridge, found a coke, took it, and left again. She had that amused look on her face again.

I honestly felt at the top of the world as I walked out of that kitchen. I had walked into that kitchen intending to get a drink, and when I'd come out I had not only solved the problem I was having with Saeko-san, but I was her _friend_. That was more than I could ever have hoped for, and I was really happy that I would no longer be dealing with scorn from someone I was … rather fond of …

"What's got you in a good mood?" Takashi asked me as I passed him.

"I've just solved a personal problem," I said, smiling. "I think I have every right to be in a good mood. How was your time with Marikawa-sensei?" I grinned deviously.

Takashi shot a glare at me. "_Not _funny," he said, making me laugh.

"Believe me, Takashi, it _was_," I said. I walked back up the stairs after that.

When I got back into the room, Kouta was still on the balcony, but now he was staring out into the streets with his sniper rifle rather than the binoculars. His nose was still leaking a little blood, but otherwise he seemed to have recovered.

"Everything okay up here?" I asked.

Kouta wiped the blood from his nose. "Other than the noises on the bridge and some barking, it's been pretty quiet," he said.

"Good," I said. There was silence for a few moments. "Why didn't you tell me about Shidou?" I had to ask. Kouta was one of my best friends; I couldn't imagine why he would keep Shidou's treatment of him a secret.

"It's like I said on the bus," he said. "No one's ever stood up for me like you, Paul … but that's maybe not a good thing when it involves a teacher. I didn't want you to get in trouble."

"Fuck trouble," I said. My fists clenched at my sides. "I'd just _love _to punch that bastard's smug fucking face in."

"I hear that," Kouta said in agreement. "Are you going to wear that quiver all the time now?"

I looked over my shoulder and saw the quiver of arrows still on my back. "I'd honestly forgotten they were even there," I admitted, chuckling. "But maybe I will. It does give me that badass archer look, don't you think?"

Kouta chuckled in response.

It went quiet again for a while … then something rather terrifying occurred to me.

"Kouta …" I said, "… is it me, or is that dog _really _loud?"

Kouta's eyes widened. "You're right … the barking is louder than the noises from the bridge from here …" He put his eyes to the scope of his sniper rifle, and looked down into the street. I used the binoculars, which he had left resting on the wall.

What I saw was not a happy sight.

"Oh shit …" I said. The zombies had followed the noise the dog was making. They had started flooding into our street, and it was _not _a pretty sight.

"Hey, guys …" Takashi said as he came out to join us. He seemed panicked, probably having heard the dog's barking.

"This is bad," said Kouta grimly.

"This place might not last too long …" I said. It was a horrifying sight to see, the zombies beginning to swarm in the street. That was when I realised that this apartment was only a temporary solution, a _very _temporary one.

And our time there was running out.

* * *

**And there we have it, Constant Readers! Paul's got his crossbow, a quiver of arrows, and they've found military earplugs this time around! That last one is mostly because of a video by The Film Theorists, in which MatPat goes through how the characters of _The Walking Dead _are likely losing their hearing due to the noise of the guns constantly firing. This detail was recommended by my friend Theboblinator_._ Credit where credit's due – thanks for the advice.**

**The conversation between Paul and Saeko went a little differently this time around, and we have a little more progression between them. I'm looking forward to writing her thoughts out again in future, just like I did in chapter three; I want to get her thoughts on the whole thing.**

**See you next time!**


	6. Paradise Lost

**Hey there, Constant Readers! A few of you may remember that this was the chapter in which I originally changed my writing style to the third person. I was experimenting, what can I say? It's good to finally have settled on a writing style. I do much prefer writing in the first person. Anyway, I hope you all enjoy the edited version of chapter six!**

**Let's begin.**

* * *

Paradise Lost

I had quite quickly forgotten about the dog as I kept my eyes on the chaos that was reigning down below us. It wasn't just zombies down there; it was people, too. There were so many people running, fleeing for their lives. And all Takashi, Kouta and I could do was watch as their desperate struggle for survival was ended by the teeth of the ravenous zombie horde.

Takashi turned around and made to leave the balcony. He was preparing his shotgun. There was a certain amount of rage on his face after watching the scene below us. "Damn it," he said in a growl. "It's too cruel …"

"Komuro," said Kouta.

"What?" Takashi asked aggressively, turning around to face us again.

"Do you really think going down there alone – with nothing but a shotgun, mind you – is gonna make any difference to those people?" I asked him, gesturing with my arms at the scene in the streets. I could hear the moans and groans of the zombies clear as day, and just barely hear the screams and whimpers of their victims.

"Did you forget 'they' react to sound, Komuro-kun?" asked Saeko-san, who had joined us on the balcony without any of us noticing. "But the living will see the light. And when that happens, they'll come to us." She turned the lights inside the bedroom off. "We need to stay in the dark."

"We can't save everyone, Takashi," I said as tenderly as I could. "I know it's maybe not the best time to be quoting from an animé, but I think what they say in _Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works _really applies here: 'Saving one person means leaving someone else to die.' I think it's best that we keep ourselves safe, just like everyone else is trying to."

"… They have to survive on their own," said Saeko-san. She sent me an approving nod and a slight smile. "Just like us. I know what you wanna say. I heard it from Miyamoto. Compared to just yesterday, you've grown severe and have also stepped up to your role as a man. But take a good look." She took the binoculars from my hands and gave them to Takashi. "Get used to it! This world's changed into a place where you can't survive on chivalry alone." She began to walk away.

"Busujima-senpai," said Takashi. Saeko-san stopped. "I could've sworn you felt differently than that." He turned to me, too. "You, too. A few days ago, you'd have jumped at a chance to save a life. When did that change?"

"When the world turned to shit," I said. I frowned. "But don't get me wrong, just because I see and accept the truth doesn't mean I like it." I gave him a dry, humourless smile. "To tell you the truth, Takashi, I feel like a huge dickhead for saying all this."

Saeko-san took a little glance at me, then looked at Takashi. "It's not like I enjoy it," she said, then went back downstairs.

Takashi brought the binoculars up to his eyes and looked down into the street. He grimaced. "… It's hell out there," he said gravely.

Kouta looked down through the scope of his sniper rifle, and I simply looked down over the edge of the balcony. I couldn't see as well as the other two, but I could see enough. I could see enough to know that there was no hope or happiness to be found down there. People were running, screaming, and dying all over the place.

But … wait … _IS THAT A LITTLE GIRL!?_

It was. There was a small girl – six or seven years old, judging from the size of her – being pulled by the hand by a man I could only assume was her father. I couldn't make out the details because I didn't have anything to look through like Takashi and Kouta did, but I had a vague understanding of what was happening as I watched the scene unfold.

They ran through a metal gate and into the garden of someone's house, a house that had the lights on.

_Saeko-san was right,_ I mused to myself. _Survivors flock toward the light like moths to the flame._

I saw the father start to bang on the doors of the house. He was yelling, too, but I didn't hear him at first. Then the frequency of his bangs on the door increased, as did the volume of his shouts. "OPEN UP!" I could hear him yell. "IF YOU DON'T OPEN THESE DOORS, I'LL BREAK 'EM DOWN!"

He was getting desperate, I could see. Though it looked almost like it was working out for him, as the door started to open … and even from this distance, I saw as someone inside the house drove a long, sharp pole into the chest of the man who was only trying to find a safe place for him and his daughter. As the man fell to the floor, his daughter kneeling by his bleeding body, the people in the house simply closed the door. They'd learned their lesson, too – they turned off their lights when the door closed.

"Son of a bitch," I muttered.

"Son of a bitch," Takashi muttered.

"Son of a bitch," Kouta muttered.

The small girl began to cry into her dead father's chest. It was a heartbreaking sight to witness. And I think the final straw for me, for _all _of us, was when the little girl's yells reached us up on the balcony.

"I'M STAYING WITH YOU, DADDY! I'M STAYING WITH YOU FOREVER!"

_A loving father, _I thought, smiling a little to myself despite the negative emotions running through me after watching the scene. _She was lucky to have one. But to lose him must be … horrible. _I couldn't imagine what that girl was going through, and I suddenly had the great urge to hug her, comfort her, tell her everything was going to be all right …

"LET'S ROCK AND ROLL!" Kouta shouted, startling me out of my thoughts, and then began shooting the zombies that were walking through the gate that lead to the garden the little girl was in. A zombie that was uncomfortably close to the little girl went down like a sack of spuds. "I can't believe I scored a headshot with a gun I've never even tested out before! I really am a natural with these things." He fired off a few more shots, downing a few more zombies.

"Aren't we not supposed to be shooting?" asked Takashi. "What happened to ignoring others for our own survival?"

"SHE'S JUST A LITTLE GIRL!" Kouta shouted. I briefly noted that he had put in his earplugs.

"We'd have to be a bunch of heartless fucks to leave a little kid out there," I said. I felt slightly hypocritical, but it would be worth it if we could save her. "And while I'm more than happy to do whatever it takes to survive, I like to pride myself on _not _being a heartless fuck."

"You can save her, right?" Kouta asked Takashi. It was strange; barely a day after all of this started, we were already looking to Takashi to make decisions and take action. "I'll cover you from here!"

Takashi smirked, dropped his gun, and ran back into the apartment.

"Takashi!" I called after him. "It'd probably be a good idea to take the fucking gun!"

"I don't know how to use it!" Takashi yelled back.

A grin appeared on my face. "Y'know," I said to Kouta, "I'd think that was funny under any other circumstances."

"Tell me about it," said Kouta. He smiled, still staring down at the street with his sniper rifle. "You and Busujima-senpai are getting along better."

"You noticed?" I asked.

"How could I not? She's speaking to you in a way that doesn't leave you looking like a kicked puppy. Hell, you seemed to be finishing off her thoughts half the time."

"Really? I hadn't noticed."

"You're an idiot."

"This coming from a guy who made a pervy remark, out loud, _in front _of the girl you were talking about."

"Touché."

Kouta shot down a few more zombies. A thought suddenly occurred to me.

"That noise can't be doing us any good," I said. "We're gonna have to leave. I should go start getting everyone ready."

I ran off downstairs, taking my crossbow down with me. I was still in my school uniform, which was probably really unhygienic by this point, so I didn't have much getting ready to do, but I seemed to recall that the girls were in varying states of undress. The thought made me blush, but I shook it off. Now was _really _not the time.

I got downstairs and saw that Takashi was preparing to leave. Rei and Saeko-san were there, too, and Rei looked rather worried, which made me assume that they had just finished talking about the situation.

"While you're out there, we'd best get ready to leave," I said as I got downstairs. "All that gunfire's gonna bring a lot of unwanted attention."

"Sounds like a plan," said Saeko-san. Takashi and Rei looked equally surprised that she had agreed with something I'd said. "Miyamoto and I will protect this place; you wake the others up and get them ready to leave."

"Right on," I said, and left the room to do just that.

I found Marikawa-sensei and Takagi-san asleep in the living room. Marikawa-sensei was still in nothing but the towel, and Takagi-san had her hair down, and she was wearing a light blue top that looked more like it should be classes as a bra, only really covering the breasts, and even then it was so tight they may as well have been on display, and a pair of black shorts that … _Those can't be classes as shorts, _I thought to myself. _My BELTS are longer than those fucking shorts!_

"Come on, you two, get your asses up!" I yelled at them.

Takagi-san stirred, but Marikawa-sensei made no moves whatsoever.

_Oh, for fuck sake, she's passed out drunk, isn't she? _I thought in annoyance. I decided to focus my current efforts on Takagi-san and then worry about Marikawa-sensei later. "Come on, Takagi-san, you need to wake the fuck up!"

Her eyes opened, and immediately they flashed with annoyance. "Wha—"

"No time to explain," I said quickly. "Just get the hell up and, preferably, get dressed. We've gotta get the hell out of dodge."

I left Takagi-san to get herself up and headed into the kitchen. I grabbed a bowl from one of the cupboards and filled it up with water in the sink. I quickly made my way back into the living room, where Takagi-san and Marikawa-sensei had been sleeping, and walked over to Marikawa-sensei's still sleeping form. Without hesitating, I tipped the water from the bowl all over Marikawa-sensei, and she woke up with a yell, sitting up instantly … which caused the towel to fall off of her, and I saw _everything_.

"Oh, dear God …" I said to myself as the blood rushed to my face. I quickly looked away.

"Jeez, you didn't have to tip water on me," she said. "Is breakfast ready?"

"Yeah, sure," I said sarcastically, still refusing to look at her. "It's a nice bowl of brain-flakes with your blood all over 'em. Get the fuck up! _And put something on_!" Takagi-san walked back in. "Takagi-san, could you get Kouta down here? I need to pack up some stuff."

From there it was really just a case of bagging up some food, ammunition, basically anything we might need when we left this place. I was carrying a bag of ammo outside. Saeko-san and Rei were standing guard, probably thinking that the large amount of zombies in the streets might be able to break through the gate if they found out we were here.

"Miyamoto," said Takagi-san, struggling to carry a rather large back. I assumed it was full of food, or something. "Leave guard duty to Busujima-senpai and help me out here!"

Marikawa-sensei walked out of the house carrying a backpack close to her chest. I saw her, and if I weren't carrying a bag I would have facepalmed. "Marikawa-sensei, what did I say about putting on some clothes!?" I asked loudly. She was in nothing but a pair of panties.

"Ah, I was wondering why I was so cold!" she said, blushing, before rushing back inside to put something on.

"Now to prep the car," said Takagi-san.

"We can get through in the car now," said Saeko-san. " 'They' are too distracted by Komuro-kun."

Takagi-san looked out the gate, toward where Takashi had gone to save the little girl. Nothing could be seen past the large amount of zombies. "What's he planning to do?" she asked. "He can't get back on the motorcycle through that horde."

"Why don't we go get him, then?" asked Marikawa-sensei. She was buttoning up a rather thin-fabric shirt, but at least she had _something _on now. We all just stared at her. "U-um, did I say something weird? I mean, I've got the keys to her car."

"That silence was more surprise that you actually came up with a good idea," I said. "Which it is. It's a pretty good idea."

"It's a hell of a plan," said Takagi-san, placing her hands on her hips. "It's settled! After we save Komuro, we'll make a mad dash across the river! Now let's get ready!"

"Never figured you for a motivational speaker, Takagi-san," I said. "Normally you just sort of insult us."

"Since when did you start speaking this much?" Takagi-san asked me.

"No idea," I said. "But I'm rather enjoying the experience so far."

We continued to get everything packed up and brought down to the Humvee. By the time we had basically everything we needed downstairs, we looked at the pile of bags that had accumulated, and I came to one conclusion: There was _way _too much stuff here.

"We got a ton," said Rei. "I wonder if we can fit it all in. And if we can, how are we going to load it up? If 'they' came halfway through …"

"We'll have to sneak them out like thieves in an RPG," said Takagi-san.

"And now we have a video game reference," I said, looking at her from the corner of my eye. "You're just full of surprises, aren't you?"

"Let's do that," said Saeko-san, agreeing with Takagi-san's suggestion that we sneak the stuff out.

We all began to pack the stuff into the Humvee. It wasn't easy, mind you, but surprisingly we actually managed to get all of the stuff in the back of the Humvee. Some people would have to sacrifice foot space, but we needed all this stuff, so it should have been fine.

Saeko-san took a place standing on the roof of the Humvee. Kouta got into the Humvee and stuck his head, with his sniper rifle, out of a hole on the top, coming out just underneath Saeko-san – I honestly don't think he noticed, because he didn't react to it at all. Marikawa-sensei got into the driver's seat, and Takagi-san just got into the Humvee. Rei and I made it our job to open the gate to the street. We did so, and the moaning of the zombies immediately seemed to increase in volume. Quickly, the two of us ran toward the Humvee and climbed in. Then Marikawa-sensei started up the engine. The headlights came on to reveal the massive horde of zombies in front of us.

Marikawa-sensei gave a little yell. "There's so many!" she said, panicking.

"Yeah, but we can't just run away," said Rei.

"Run 'em down!" Takagi-san said, pointing toward the horde intensely.

And run them down she did. Once she had started driving Marikawa-sensei didn't stop even after hitting the zombie horde in front of us. The way the bounced off the windscreen when the Humvee hit them resembled some sort of grotesque trampoline, only they were leaving bloody prints behind. Marikawa-sensei turned on the windscreen wipers to get rid of the blood, making the road ahead of us visible once more.

Takashi came into view very soon after we started driving, the house he had gone to rescue the girl from being only a little way down the street from the apartment. And even then we didn't have to go all the way. Takashi was standing on one of the walls that separated people's gardens from the street, the little girl piggy-backing on his back.

Marikawa-sensei screeched the Humvee to a halt next to the wall Takashi was standing on.

"Come on, man!" I yelled out at him. "Your ride's waiting!"

"Last call for a ride across the river," Saeko-san said. "You getting on?"

"Of course!" I heard Takashi yell, and then the gave a quick, careful run up, and jumped from the wall and onto the top of the Humvee. Kouta ducked into the car through the hole, followed by Takashi and the small girl, who I now got a good look at. She had shoulder-length pink hair with bangs reaching down the sides of her temples and stretching outward. She had a mole under her left eye, and both of her eyes were a shining purple. She was wearing a white blouse over a light pink dress. Saeko-san climbed back in last.

"Hi," I said to the little girl when she sat down. I gave a gentle smile. "Good to see Takashi kept you safe. What's your name?"

"A-Alice," she said, a little nervously.

"Well, Alice, I'm Paul," I said. My smile widened. "Don't worry, you'll be safe with us. We're all gonna take care of you now, okay?"

Alice didn't really respond, but she did smile and nod, so I thought I'd handled that pretty well. Just seeing a smile on her face after everything she'd been through was enough to put me in a good mood.

"Well, who'd have thought?" Rei asked, smirking at me. "Paul's got a big brotherly side to him."

I shrugged. "I can't help it," I said. "I've always gotten along well with kids."

The curious thing was that I wasn't lying. I rarely had any reason to interact with small children, but on the occasions where I did, I found that I got along really well with them. I've never been truly sure why, but I'd always theorised that it was because of my own harsh childhood. I think I wanted to give them happiness that I never had growing up. But, again, I've never been sure.

"I don't know about you guys, but I think that's enough excitement for one day," I said. A yawn escaped my lips, and I suddenly realised just how tired I really was. I hadn't done much in the way of fighting, but when I considered how long it had been since the bus, I realised that I hadn't slept in about fifteen hours.

"Damn … straight …" Takashi said, panting, from his seat beside Rei.

Just before I drifted off to sleep, I noticed that Saeko-san was sitting right next to me. The thought that she wasn't trying to sit as far away from me as possible, as she would have done a few days ago, made me smile as I drifted off.

_In spite of everything, today was a good day, _were the last thoughts I had before falling asleep.

* * *

**Okay, first thing I need to ask, who caught the _Red vs. Blue _reference in this chapter? I slipped it in relatively early in the chapter. Also, when Paul quoted _Fate/Stay Night: Unlimited Blade Works _early in the chapter, that was paraphrasing. I've only watched the show once, and I love it, but I can't remember the line _exactly_. I hope you'll forgive me that.**

**I hope you guys have enjoyed the edited chapter three. Paul has become more sociable in the group thanks to the boost in positive emotions he's been feeling after last chapter. Things will be picking up from here on in, I can promise you all that!**

**Now, I've been thinking about it, and I'm probably going to combine a couple of chapters, because after this they get _horrifically _short.**

**See you guys next time!**


	7. On the Road Again

**Well, Constant Readers, this is around the point where I'm going to start combining chapters. This chapter and next chapter slot together a little too well, and they're both really short, so I thought it'd be best.**

**By around this point last time, a lot of you had tried to guess what the animosity between Paul and Saeko was about, and a few of you managed to guess it correctly. You'll find out the details later on.**

**The start of this chapter will be in the third person, because I want to get the thoughts of a few of the others in. It'll go back to Paul's POV pretty quickly, though.**

**A brief warning to those of you who have watched the animé but not read the manga, this is where the timeline starts to diverge. See, whereas in the animé this is where Saeko and Takashi would split off from the group, in the manga, which is what I'm following, that doesn't happen until after the Takagi Estate. There will obviously be certain changes to that when the time comes, but for now I just wanted to warn you of the differences.**

**Let's begin.**

* * *

On the Road Again

"_Row, row, row your boat~ La la la la la~__ Gently down the stream~_" Kouta and Alice are both singing atop the Humvee. Everyone else, with the exceptions of Saya and Shizuka, is asleep inside.

"_Row, row, row your boat~_" Alice begins to sing again. "Alice can sing it in English, too," she says. It is due to her age that no one really pays mind to the fact that she sometimes refers to herself in the third person.

"Wow, let's hear it, then!" says Kouta.

"_Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream~ Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily, life is but a dream~_" Alice sings in perfect English.

"Okay, now it's time to switch lyrics," says Kouta.

"Okay!" says Alice.

"_Shoot, shoot, shoot your gun, kill them all right now~ Bang, bang, bang, bang, life is but a scream~_"

Alice laughs at the rather crude version of the song. "Kouta-chan, you're so funny!"

Saya, hearing this, sticks her head out of the hole in the roof. "You fat geek!" she says to Kouta, glaring at him. "Don't go teaching inappropriate songs to little kids!"

Kouta smiles sheepishly at her, whereas Alice just looks confused.

There has been a certain feeling of joy in the air ever since the night before. None of them can explain it – maybe it's the fact that they successfully saved Alice and made it away from the apartment with all their supplies intact, but none of them are sure – but they have all been able to sleep easier than they have any other night. Even the ones who have little trouble sleeping found it easier. The fact that they have successfully managed to drive most of the way across the river is also a factor.

"Everyone, wake up!" Shizuka calls to Takashi, Rei, Paul and Saeko, who are still asleep in the back of the Humvee. "We're almost to the other side!"

Rei wakes up almost immediately. She sits up, rubs her eyes, and then sees something that has her smirking wider than she has in a while. She shakes Takashi awake, making him groan in annoyance.

"What?" Takashi asks, groaning.

"Do you think Paul's enjoying himself?" Rei asks him, nodding at the two sleeping figures beside them.

"What do you … mean …?" Takashi asks, but then he sees what she is looking at, and a smirk of his own grows across his face.

Paul is fast asleep, as one would expect, his head resting on the back of his seat, breathing softly. The real eye catcher is that Saeko is asleep _on _him. Apparently at some point in the night, she had shifted in her sleep, and now she is lying face down on Paul's crotch, drooling. It looks hilariously suggestive to Takashi and Rei.

While they find the position the two are in hilarious, they are glad to see Paul and Saeko getting along. Everyone has noticed the negativity Saeko treats Paul with, and they have also noticed how beaten up he seems to be about it. It doesn't exactly take a genius to see what is going on there (and even if it did, they _have _a genius to tell them). But since the apartment, the two of them have been getting along well, _exceptionally _well, considering the antagonistic relationship they had before. And so this scene isn't just hilarious; it is actually kind of adorable.

Fortunately for her, Saeko is the first of the two to wake up. She sits up, rubbing her eyes, apparently not even realising where she has been sleeping.

"Comfortable?" Rei asks her with a teasing smirk.

"Huh?" Saeko blinks a few times, her eyes widening as she realises the position she is in. "Ah!" She shoots up like lightning and puts herself as far away from him as she can. Her face is red with embarrassment. She honestly can't remember ever being this embarrassed, her heart racing and the blood shooting to her face.

"Wow, I guess you two really _are _getting along now," says Takashi, trying not to laugh.

Saeko tries her best to calm herself down, to force the blush down from her face. But she can't. It isn't just the situation she has woken up in – considering the fact that he is asleep, she thinks she could recover from that fairly easily – it is the fact that it's _him_. She can't explain it, no matter how much she tries, but something about the fact that it is specifically _Paul _makes it so much harder to send the embarrassment away.

She doubles her efforts when she sees him start to move.

* * *

I yawned heavily as I woke up. "Morning already?" I said through my yawn. I rubbed my eyes of sleep, then I noticed something weird: a wet patch on the crotch area of my trousers. "Oh, I didn't piss myself, did I? Shit, I haven't done that since I was about five years old." Takashi and Rei started trying and failing to stifle a round of laughter. "Oh, yeah, you can fucking laugh, can't you? Damn, that's embarrassing …"

"Let's get off," said Takashi, recovering from the laughter but still grinning.

"Why?" asked Rei.

"We need to climb the embankment," said Takashi.

The car stopped and we all climbed out. The embankment we would be climbing was steep, but not so much that the climb would be impossible. It seemed we had been right in our assumptions that the water would be shallower up here, and the police patrols not so heavy. Hell, there didn't seem to _be _any police patrols down here. Considering the fact that they seemed to be trying to stop people from crossing the river, that was slightly disconcerting.

"Komuro," Kouta said from the roof of the Humvee. "Help me get Alice-chan down."

Takashi reached up to get Alice-chan down.

"Um! Uh!" Alice-chan stammered, shaking her head. "You see …" She pushed her skirt in to cover up what was underneath. Her face was bright red. "My panties …"

"Uh …" Takashi just stood there, looking dumbfounded.

Rei walked over and quickly snatched Alice-chan down. "Don't be so insensitive!" she said, glaring at Takashi. "We're going to get dressed, so don't look this way."

"Don't worry, none of us have a death wish," I said, leaning down to pet the small white dog with black ears that Alice-chan had brought along with us. He was a friendly little guy, really adorable. I started to wish that we had a change of clothes, too, because these school uniforms were _really _starting to stink.

I stopped petting the dog so that I could walk over and have a chat with Takashi and Kouta. The dog immediately started barking in protest.

"You're as peppy as usual, I see," said Takashi, looking at the dog.

"Ain't he just," I said, smiling fondly. I really liked dogs. We'd names this one Zeke, named after the term used by the allies for the Mitsubishi A6M Zero fighter jet. It was Kouta who came up with that, of course. And it worked; he was small and full of piss and vinegar, really feisty little guy.

"Komuro, you use this," Kouta said, handing Takashi back the shotgun. "It's a shotgun, so all you'll have to do is aim for the head."

"I told you, I don't know how to use that," said Takashi. "I prefer to use my bat."

"Bad idea, Takashi," I said, sighing. "That might work for Saeko-san, but that's because she's trained. But under the current circumstances it'll be a lot easier to teach you how to use a gun than how to effectively go against a crowd with a baseball bat."

Takashi sighed in annoyance. "Fine," he said. "Just tell me what to do, Hirano."

Kouta lifted up the shotgun and pointed to the slot where the bullets were inserted. "This here's where you feed in the shells," he said. "Then, line up the target with the sight and pull the trigger. That'll send their heads flying. Since you haven't had time to practice, only use it on them when they're nearby."

"What about when I run out of ammo?" Takashi asked.

"When that happens, this gate here opens." Kouta showed Takashi the gate, which was open, where he would have to slot in the shells. "Just press like this. Usually, you get four rounds. Even when there's a round already loaded in the chamber, you only get five shots, so be careful."

"Just because I hear it once doesn't mean I'll remember." Takashi sighed. "If worse comes to worst, I'll just use it as a club."

Kouta huffed in irritation. Then he looked at me. "You want me to teach you how to use the crossbow, Paul?" he asked.

"No need," I said. It felt like I had to swallow a stone in my throat when I next spoke. "I used to get dragged on these hunting trips, 'cause the … 'parent' I went with was too cheap to get a babysitter." I hoisted up the crossbow and rested it on my shoulder. "I learned to use one of these babies at a pretty young age."

It was true. My dad wasn't only an abusive parent, he was a real cheap bastard. Either that, or he was afraid any babysitter he may have hired might have seen the marks on me … which is probably more likely, now that I thought about it. Anyway, while I didn't enjoy the hunting – killing animals for sport wasn't something I particularly agreed with – it was still the only thing my father did with me other than hit me, which gave those trips a strange sense of nostalgia that I never got whenever else I thought of my father … And even the hunting trip stopped when I was about eleven years old. According to him, at that age I was old enough to take care of myself for a while.

"Okay," Kouta said, nodding. He looked like he wanted to ask about something, but he didn't say it.

"So, I hear you were singing with Alice-chan earlier," I said to Kouta, chuckling. "Heard you got into a bit of trouble with Takagi-san, too."

"Yeah," said Kouta. "She didn't want me teaching violent songs to Alice-chan."

I snorted. "She's lucky you weren't singing the filthy version of 'Row, Row Your Boat.' " Takashi and Kouta both just looked at me, confused. I realised that they probably hadn't heard it, and a grin worked its way onto my face. "_Fuck, fuck, fuck a duck, screw a kangaroo~ Eat a grape, rape an ape, orgy at the zoo~_"

Takashi and Kouta seemed to completely lose their shit by the time I'd finished, breaking out into laughter. Even Zeke seemed to be barking out his approval. I soon joined in with the laughter, happy that, despite everything that was happening, we could still find a reason to laugh our asses off.

"Hey, misters!" the voice of Alice-chan called from behind us.

Takashi, Kouta and I turned around and saw that the girls had all gotten changed. Rei and Saeko-san were back in their now clean school uniforms, but with a few extras. Rei had added knee pads and fingerless gloves, and she was holding the semi-automatic rifle in front of her; the strap of the gun was around her shoulder so that she wouldn't drop it. Saeko-san had only added a pair of black combat boots, but I still couldn't take my eyes off her. She really was beautiful …

The only one to have completely changed their attire was Takagi-san. She wore a white shirt-jacket of a black tank top that fitted her rather tightly, and a short green skirt. Marikawa-sensei was wearing a similar shirt-jacket, and had replaced her ripped skirt with a new one. Alice-chan hadn't changed at all.

While I couldn't take my eyes off Saeko-san, I also couldn't help but be relieved that the girls didn't appear to have heard the song. Honestly, the things one could find on the internet. Zeke seemed to be barking in approval, but I hardly noticed. I did my best to shake myself out of the trance, but I found that my eyes still kept drifting over to Saeko-san.

"Problem?" Rei asked, eyeing Takashi.

"No, it suits you," Takashi said without hesitating. "But can you really fire that thing?" He nodded at the gun she was holding.

"Hirano-kun can teach me," she said. "In a worse case scenario, I'll just use it as a spear."

"Ah! You can do that!" Kouta said excitedly. "You can definitely do that! It's equipped with a military-issue bayonet. A bayonet!" He cleared his throat and calmed down. "Anyway, you're gonna need these." He pulled a pair of the military earplugs from his pocket and handed them to Rei. "They'll stop the sound of the gun from deafening you. There are only four sets, so they should go to the people actually using the guns, seeing as they're most in danger from the noise."

"Thanks," said Rei, taking the earplugs.

Takashi, Kouta and I then had the job of climbing the embankment on our own so that we could make sure the road was clear before the girls brought the car up. Making our way up the incredibly steep surface was by no means fun – in fact it was exhausting – but I was actually rather grateful for the exercise; it helped to wake me up a little more. As we reached the road, we brandished our respective weapons, and saw …

… no one. Not a single person, nor a single zombie. The road was completely bare of any kind of life … or unlife, as the case may have been. We looked around for a few moments, confused, before deciding not to look a gift horse in the mouth.

"All clear!" Takashi called down to the girls. "There are none of 'them' around!"

The sound of the Humvee's engine was faint at first … but then if got very loud, _very _fucking quickly. I chanced a look back down the embankment, and I began to panic almost immediately.

"FUCKING DUCK!" I yelled at Takashi and Kouta before hitting the deck, the two of them doing the same. The Humvee practically flew over the top of the embankment, passing above our heads, and landing in the middle of the road. "Holy shit …" My breathing was shaky and my pulse was racing. Of all the things I thought might kill me, the school nurse's driving skills was _not _one of them.

"How'd she get a Humvee to move like that …?" Kouta asked from his own spot on the floor.

The girls got out of the car and joined us on the road as we stood up.

"Next time you're gonna try and kill us, give us some warning, yeah?" I asked sarcastically.

"Shut up, Blake," Takagi-san said without even looking at me. She looked around the area with the binoculars and sighed. "Looks like they weren't able to isolate it with the river."

"The news said it's like this all over the world," said Saeko-san.

"If there are still police, I'm sure …" Rei stopped speaking when she noticed Takagi-san looking at her. But then something unexpected happened: Takagi-san _smiled_!

"You're right," said Takagi-san. "Japan's police are devoted to their jobs."

"Yeah … right!" said Rei. She sounded quite confused.

"What do we do now?" asked Marikawa-sensei.

"Takagi, your house is in Area 2 in the East Hills, right?" Takashi asked.

"Yeah," said Takagi-san.

"Then it's closest," said Takashi. "We'll go to your place first. But listen …"

"I know," said Takagi-san, interrupting him. "I won't hold my breath, but …"

Takashi smiled. "Okay, then. Let's go!"

We all got back into the Humvee, Takashi and Rei opting to sit on the roof this time. Takagi-san sat in the front with Marikawa-sensei, and I was once again seated next to Saeko-san. Kouta and Alice-chan sat together.

"So, Alice-chan," I said to the small girl. "Are you all good now?" I had been worried about her ever since the night before. Seeing a parent die in front of her couldn't have been a very pleasant experience, especially at her young age.

"Don't worry, Paul-chan, I think I'll be fine," said Alice-chan, giggling as Zeke licked her on the cheek.

I smiled at her. "You like that little guy, huh?" I reached over and petted Zeke on the head, then I returned my hands to my lap, in which sat my crossbow.

"Yeah, he's cute." Zeke gave her more licks at the comment.

I chuckled and ruffled Alice-chan's hair a little. "All right. You two have fun, now." I stared forward, unable to take the smile off my face.

"You're quite fond of children, aren't you?" Saeko-san asked me. There was a small smile on her face.

"Always have been," I said to her. "I'm not a hundred percent sure why, but I think it might have something to do with …" I stopped myself from saying any more. "Doesn't matter." I honestly couldn't believe I was about to spill my guts to her. We had been getting along well ever since the night before, but after all this time I was genuinely about to tell her everything after only one night of friendship … How could I have so much trust in her so quickly?

I could feel her eyes on me for a few more moments. "You know, if you want to talk, I'm here," she said. She sounded concerned. I guess I didn't mask my reluctance to share my thoughts very well.

I couldn't stop the smile from forming on my face. I felt my cheeks heat up a little, too. "Same to you," I said.

The majority of the journey was made in silence.

* * *

The zombies were absolutely everywhere. It had started a little bit down the road; we had seen a few zombies … and then a few more … and then a few more … And just like that, they were everywhere. I couldn't figure out why, and neither could anyone else.

"Take that left there!" I yelled at Marikawa-sensei. "Left!"

She swung the Humvee to the left as I had said, but there were even more zombies in that direction.

_What in the fuck is going on? _I asked in my mind. _There have been basically none of them up until this point; why are they all starting to congregate now? Unless … _The only thing that made sense was that they were all coming this way because there were survivors this way. We hadn't seen them, but why would the zombies all be heading in one direction otherwise? The streets were free of all actual life, so if someone had gone in this direction before us, it would explain why we were only just coming across all these zombies. They had heard food coming this way, and it was the only food in the area.

Well, until we arrived, anyway.

Marikawa-sensei began swerving the car constantly to avoid hitting anything.

"Just run them over!" Takagi-san yelled.

Marikawa-sensei did as she was told and began to run the zombies down with the Humvee. The only problem with this was that there were so many that their blood now obscured our vision of the road.

"STOP!" I heard Rei yell from the top of the Humvee.

"Huh?" said Marikawa-sensei.

I squinted, looking out the blood-covered windscreen. It wasn't clear, but I could make out … _something _up ahead.

"There's a wire drawn across!" Saeko-san suddenly exclaimed. "Turn to the side so the car gets the brunt of it!"

Marikawa-sensei violently turned the wheel to the left, causing all of us to be suddenly flung against the right hand side of the car. I held on to Alice-chan and put myself between her and the walls of the car as to shield her from the impact. Kouta did much the same with Zeke. Alice-chan was crying.

"Don't look," I said to her, covering her eyes with one of my hands. We had apparently hit some zombies during the swerve, because there was a _lot _of blood and gore on the windows on the side of the car that had hit the wire.

The zombies were approaching the now stationary Humvee. Marikawa-sensei put her foot to the gas pedal, but we didn't move.

"It's too slippery!" she exclaimed in a panic. She took her foot off the pedal, but I could still hear the wheels moving … and we were still going nowhere. "Stop!" She banged violently on the steering wheel. "Why won't it stop!?"

"It's the flesh …" said Takagi-san. "The wheels are slipping on all the blood and guts!"

"Sensei!" Kouta yelled. "The tires are locking up!"

"You need to release the brake!" I said. "Then press on the gas, lightly!"

Marikawa-sensei did so. The car started to move forward. It all seemed to be going well, until …

"Sensei!" Takashi yelled from atop the Humvee. "Ahead! Look ahead!"

"I'm not cut out for this!" said Marikawa-sensei as she tried to brake. But she couldn't. The Humvee hit what I could only assume was a curb that was too high for the vehicle to climb up.

The impact made us all lurch a little, but it was nothing compared to what happened to Rei. I saw her fly off the roof and onto the pavement as the Humvee came to a sudden stop. Takashi jumped down from the roof, carefully aimed his shotgun toward the approaching horde of zombies, and fired … but only one of them died. Takashi looked frustrated and confused, and I didn't blame him. The spread of a shotgun should have ensured that at least a few of them went down.

Kouta climbed up to the roof through the hole, carrying his sniper rifle. "Not like that!" he yelled at Takashi. "Firing kicks the muzzle up and sprays the shot too high! Hold it as firm as you can and aim for the chest instead!" I heard shots firing from his sniper rifle.

Takashi aimed his shotgun again, this time aiming slightly lower. He aimed carefully, pulled the trigger, and killed around four of the zombies.

It was at around this point that I realised there were too many zombies for Takashi and Kouta to fight off alone. With the situation as it was, I really couldn't afford to just sit there and protect Alice-chan from the chaos spreading around us. As much as it pained me to admit, protecting Alice-chan's childhood innocence would have to take a back seat to our survival. I released her from my protective grip and faced her. "You listen to me," I said, as tenderly as I could given the circumstances. "You stay in here with Marikawa-sensei and Takagi-san while the fighting goes on. Everything's going to be all right, okay?"

Alice-chan was shaking. "Okay," she said hesitantly.

I got out of the car and immediately aimed my crossbow at the head of a zombie. The arrow went into its head, and the undead bastard went down without a fuss. I hadn't included Saeko-san on the list of people who would be staying in the car, because I knew she wouldn't do that. Marikawa-sensei wasn't the kind who was able to fight, and Takagi-san was more brains than brawn, but there was no way Saeko-san was going to stay in the car while we did all the fighting. Her fighting spirit was one of the things I admired about her, actually.

I continued to fire my crossbow at the zombies, pulling a new arrow out of the quiver on my back each time I fired a shot. If a zombie I'd hit was close enough, I would pull the arrow out of its head and reuse it.

"After you've fired a shot, hold down the trigger and pull back on the foregrip!" Kouta yelled instructions at Takashi as he fired at the zombies. "Just shift the muzzle a little!"

Takashi followed his instructions and took out three more zombies. "Woo-hoo! This rocks!" he exclaimed. Then he tried to fire again, but nothing came out. He reached into his pockets for more ammo, but he ended up spilling the shells all over the floor. The zombies were approaching him.

I fired an arrow into the head of one that had gotten too close to him for comfort. Then I reloaded and fired at another of the approaching horde. Then Saeko-san got out of the car and used her boken to smash one of their heads in.

"Komuro-kun, we've got you covered!" she said. "Just get Miyamoto-san!"

"No!" said Takashi. "There's too many of them to fight with a wooden sword!"

"That's why I've got a crossbow covering me!" She smashed in another zombies head, and, as if to illustrate her point, I put an arrow in the head of one that had been getting close to her. With me using the crossbow to take out the ones that she missed while fighting with her boken, we actually made quite the effective team.

I was silently grateful that the arrows for the crossbow were quite thin, as that meant there were a lot more of them in the quiver than it looked like. Nevertheless, I reused any that I was able to recover in order to conserve ammo. I was very careful with my aiming because, given the chaotic nature of the situation, it was very likely I'd hit Saeko-san if I wasn't careful, and I certainly didn't want that to happen. I aimed and I fired, over and over, but it seemed almost like the zombie equivalent of a Hydra: kill one, two more took its place.

"Hirano, what about this one!?" Takashi asked. I turned my head briefly and saw that he was utilising Rei's rifle … which was still strapped to her. I quickly tried to ignore that and focus on the fighting.

"Pull the lever in front of the trigger guard!" Kouta told him. "It releases the safety! Then pull the charging handle on the right side and fire!"

Soon after that, zombies' heads started blowing up thanks to Takashi firing the rifle. After a while, however, he started missing, and the bullets were just flying past the zombies or embedding themselves in any part of the body other than the head.

Kouta stopped firing for a while. I started to get worried, but then he shouted, "I'LL KILL THEM ALL!" and started firing again. I didn't know what had happened, but I was too focused on killing the approaching zombies to think about it. It had gotten to a stage where I had to pull arrows out of the heads of dead zombies just to be sure I _had _any ammo. There were just so damn _many _of them.

"The shells are at your feet!" I heard Kouta say. "Do you know how to use it?"

"I'm a genius!" said Takagi-san. "I'll figure it out!"

I turned and saw that Takagi-san was out of the car and wielding Takashi's discarded shotgun.

"Takagi-san!" I said in surprise, at the same time as Takashi said, "Takagi!"

"Call me by my first name from now on!" she said, brandishing the shotgun in front of her. She loaded it and fired it directly into the skull of a zombie that had gotten particularly close to her. She cringed for a moment, looking almost like she did back at the school when she had been covered in blood. But then she muttered to herself, and the disgusted look on her face became a glare. She continued muttering to herself, then … "I'M NO WUSS!" she shouted at the top of her lungs. She aimed the shotgun at the zombies again, looking extraordinarily angry. "I'M NOT GONNA DIE! NOBODY'S GONNA MAKE ME DIE!" She pointed in a direction past the wire. "My house is right over there!"

As optimistic as her words were, they didn't do us any real good in that moment. Saeko-san was being grabbed my zombies a lot more than she was before, and I did my best to keep them off her, but even I was getting crowded at this point. I looked around and the world almost appeared to be in slow motion. _I'm going to die here, _I thought suddenly, sure that I was. I took a deep breath and stopped paying attention to the zombies that were closing in on me. I aimed my crossbow at the ones trying to get to Saeko-san, and focused all of my attention on them. I took one of the ones that had hold of her arm down, and she looked toward me briefly, eyes widening when she caught sight of the zombies that were surrounding me. They weren't within grabbing distance yet, but it was only a matter of time. Despite this, I smiled. If I was going to die here, I was going to keep her alive for as long as I could. I was determined of that.

But then something amazing happened.

"EVERYBODY DOWN!"

My eyes widened in shock as several massive streams of water fired through the gas in the wiring. I ducked, and one of the steams passed over me, soaking me a little, but knocking back the zombies that had been closing in on me. When I looked, I saw that there were a number of men in body armour and fire-fighting gear behind the wired fence. Another blast of water from one of them that had climbed atop the Humvee sent most of the zombies staggering away from us.

"Get over here while you can!" one of the new arrivals said. "We'll collect your vehicle later!"

It didn't take long for the zombies in the immediate vicinity to be killed off. Their heads smashed off the floor when they were hit with the high-powered hoses. It made me think of what Takashi, Rei and I had done on the roof of the school, and an involuntary smile flashed across my face.

"You should be safe now," said one of our saviours. This one sounded more feminine than the others, so I assumed that it was a woman under that mask.

A few moments later, all of us were laughing in relief, some more than others. Mere minutes ago I had been so sure of my own death, but there I was, saved! It felt really good.

"We are truly thankful for your timely intervention," said Saeko-san, bowing thankfully to them.

"Of course," said the woman. She lifted her mask off to reveal a good looking middle-aged woman with long, light purple hair and matching eyes. "After all, it was my daughter and her friends."

I saw Takagi-san go slack-jawed for a moment, before running over and embracing her mother in joy.

"Do you think it'll happen like this every time?" Takashi asked all of us, smiling. "Do you think everyone's parents'll just fall into our laps?"

"_I fucking hope not …_" I said under my breath.

Unfortunately, Takashi seemed to have heard it. "Why not?" he asked.

"Do you think we could live through a situation like this every time?" I asked, thinking quickly about how to cover myself. "I don't think we want to risk it."

He wasn't the only one who had heard me, I knew. I could see the looks basically everyone but Takagi-san was giving me. They looked concerned and curious, but I chose to ignore them. There was no need to go into details like that.

The look Saeko-san gave me was different, though. I wasn't sure what it was, but the curiosity and confusion she looked at me with seemed to be for an entirely different reason than any of the others.

I decided I would worry about it later. For now, potential safety awaited.

This was the happiest ending we would get for a while.

* * *

**A lot longer than it was originally, right? That's because originally this was two separate chapters. I prefer it like this.**

**I had Saeko fall asleep on Paul instead of Takashi both for romance's sake and for comedic effect. You can see from her thoughts that there's more to her embarrassment than just the situation itself, and the idea that she was like that with someone she's only just started getting along with is quite funny to me. And that song, "Fuck, Fuck a Duck," is something I found on Facebook once; I didn't come up with it.**

**That moment near the end where Paul was blatantly ignoring his own survival in favour of Saeko's will be addressed, I assure you. And we're getting closer to the point where Paul is likely to spill the beans in regards to his childhood abuse, whether intentionally or not. And as we get into the Takagi Estate portion of the storyline, we also get closer to the famous shrine scene! I'm really looking forward to writing that, there's so much I can get out in the open, including a few revelations that I've been teasing for quite a while now.**

**Hope you enjoyed the chapter, Constant Readers, and I'll see you next time!**


	8. House of the Living (Not the Dead)

**Welcome to chapter eight of _Zombies and High School Kids_, Constant Readers! This time we're beginning the Takagi Estate stuff, which should certainly be fun. I get the feeling I'm going to enjoy writing out this one, because I'm getting in some more character development, which is always fun for me to write. I enjoy writing out simple character interaction.**

**Let's begin.**

* * *

House of the Living (Not the Dead)

The Takagi Estate was one _big_ ass house. I wasn't quite sure what else I was expecting, to be completely honest. We had been there for around a day or so, and despite the sense of calmness that had overtaken us since arriving at the safe haven, I couldn't help but let my mind wander to the world beyond those walls that surrounded the mansion … beyond the barricades that had been set up on the roads … the hell that we had been living in for almost a week now …

I was wandering aimlessly around the house. There was nowhere in particular we weren't allowed to go, and the house was massive, so I could wander all I liked for as long as I liked and the odds were that I wouldn't encounter another living person; no dead ones, either, thankfully. I enjoyed the time to myself, it helped me think on things. There was a certain feeling of serenity I felt when I was spending time to myself that I didn't experience when with other people. Maybe it was because I didn't have the best example of what people were like growing up, or maybe I was just a little antisocial. Either one was a likely possibility.

I thought back on the last few days. On that first day, the day everything had come to an end, I hadn't taken it as badly as the others had. I'd had the initial confusion and fear when the shit started to hit the fan, but after that I really wasn't as bothered as I should have been. The others all had a certain look of revulsion on their face when they saw the blood, when they killed one of the zombies, but I felt no such thing. It was just something I had to do.

The others were like that now, of course, and it was actually kind of sad to think about. It was like they had changed completely. They were still the same people with the same personalities, the same people I had come to care about, but when the fighting started, when killing became necessary, it was like all their demeanours changed. It was almost bloodthirsty, the looks on their faces when they started fighting. I was almost entirely indifferent to it, but the others were adapting to it. The only one other than myself who hadn't changed all that much since this started was …

_Saeko-san. _The thought brought a smile to my face. _But that's not entirely true, is it?_

From the beginning, she had had that serious look on her face during a fight. She would smirk on occasion, but her eyes retained that dead serious look to them, like she was completely focused on what she was doing. That hadn't changed. But she _had _changed. At least, she had around me. When all of this started, she seemed to think of me in the same manner as one thinks of some disgusting thing they don't want to interact with, but now she was talking to me like a friend. It was strange, because despite the circumstances of the situation, I had genuinely never been happier in my life. Even without the crush I had on her, the fact that she had stopped treating me like the enemy would have made me feel this happy.

I wasn't so optimistic as to think that she might return my feelings one day, but the fact that she was my friend now was enough.

"—fter the way you fired that gun, my tits hurt, too!" I heard Rei's muffled voice coming out of the room she was in. I just happened to be passing by it. "So I'm gonna rub medicine on them!"

The speed with which Takashi exited that room was truly a sight to behold. I couldn't really blame him. Rei sounded _pissed_.

"Girl trouble?" I asked him, smiling. He looked at me and smiled, too. "Again? That's gotta be some kind of record for you, hasn't it?"

"Yeah, probably," said Takashi. "But you can't really talk. Up until recently, Busujima-senpai was treating you like you murdered her favourite dog."

"Still not sure what that was all about, to tell you the truth, but I'm glad it's all over. Me and Saeko-san are getting along fine now."

"Oh, first name basis? You sly dog, I didn't think you had it in you." Upon seeing my blank look, Takashi laughed a little. "Oh, come on, Paul. Everyone knows you like Busujima-senpai."

"It's that obvious, huh?" I was embarrassed but also slightly amused by my apparent inability to keep my feelings to myself.

"Every time she snapped at you, you got this abused puppy look. Plus, you've been in a _way _better mood than I've ever seen you ever since we left Shizuka-sensei's friend's place." I sighed a little at how easy I was for Takashi to read. And if he was right, _everyone _was able to read me like a book. "You should try talking to her more. You two've been getting along like a house on fire since we left the apartment, and you seemed to have creepily similar thoughts about the situation. Just, you know, _talk _to her. You might be surprised."

"You should talk," I said. One of the driving forces behind Rei's breakup with Takashi was that he apparently didn't talk enough. A few days before, I would have felt really shitty about bringing this topic up in conversation, but since then I thought we all had slightly bigger things to worry about.

"You should listen," Takashi said, shrugging.

"… Touché." I laughed. Then I threw my hands in the air in surrender. "All right. I'll talk to her. But don't expect anything to come of it. I'm gonna carry on with my walk. See you later."

"See ya," Takashi said, and I started to walk off. I had a small smile on my face at how Takashi had tried to help me out. It was a reminder that my friends cared about me, and as small a reminder as it was, sometimes all I needed was a small reminder.

I continued my aimless wandering around the Estate. I found myself, almost on instinct, checking the architecture as I walked through to see how defendable this place would be in the event that the zombies managed to get past the blockades and the gates. While _House of the Dead _was a great arcade game, I didn't exactly want to live it, you know? I didn't even really realised I was doing it; it was like my brain was running on automatic at this point. And even then, there was no _point _to doing it. Did I really think that the people in charge here would have stayed if they weren't absolutely certain it was safe? No, of course not … but all the same, I kept looking.

_There's something about you that's changed, _I told myself. _You're getting paranoid._

Yes, it would appear I was. But … _why? _I had never cared before, I _still _didn't particularly care about my own well-being, so why was I so paranoid about this place's safety? I couldn't figure out what was going on inside my own head, and that scared me.

I mulled over my confusion in silence until I walked into a room. Then I stopped dead. In the room stood Saeko-san, and she was wearing a kimono. My brain died for a little while when I saw her. What she had been wearing in the apartment may have been unintentionally erotic, but this … she looked _beautiful_. All I could do was stand there, my mouth agape, as I looked at the beautiful young woman in front of me.

"What?" she asked me. She was smirking a little, which made me wonder if she knew _exactly _why I was staring at her.

"… If I'm honest, promise you won't hit me?" I asked. I mentally smacked myself almost instantly. We were friends now, there was no need for me to feel so tense around her … yet I couldn't help it. It was a force of habit. She nodded at me, and then I spoke. "You look _really _good in that … No, not just _good_, b-_beautiful_." I cursed at myself for stuttering.

"Thank you," she said. She was smiling, and there was a _very slight _tinge of pink to her cheeks. "Why would I hit you for giving me a compliment?"

I rubbed the back of my neck awkwardly, smiling apologetically. "Sorry. I'm not used to you not being at my throat just yet. Er, no offence."

"None taken." Her smile faded slightly. "Can I ask you something?"

"… Okay …"

"Out on the road, you protected me from 'them' even though you yourself were surrounded. Why? Is it because you still think the things you said on the bus?"

"You heard that?"

"I wasn't listening. At least, I wasn't _trying _to. You'll have to forgive me for the unintended eavesdropping. But … I'm right, aren't I? You still think like that."

I sighed, my arms slumping to my sides. "As … as nice as it was to hear that my life had value to others, it takes more than one conversation to change a whole line of thinking, especially one like that," I said. "I've never particularly cared about myself that much; I still don't, as a matter of fact. On the road, I thought we were all going to die, and all I could think of to do was to use the last moments of my life to keep someone else alive for as long as I could. Be of some use to someone, you know."

She was silent for a few moments, contemplative. Then she fixed me with a firm gaze. "Don't do that again," she said. "Helping someone else by risking your life is a noble thing, but when you're clearly about to die and you still don't do anything to keep yourself safe, it's stupidity. I didn't take you for an idiot."

That blow stung something fierce. "I … I'm sorry," I said. I felt rather pathetic as I said it. I couldn't hold her gaze, my eyes drifting and becoming very focused on my feet.

I heard her sigh and walk near me. I felt her hand on my shoulder, and I managed to bring my head up to make eye contact with her again. "I'm sorry if I sound harsh," she said. She smiled gently at me. "I'm grateful to you for trying to protect me, I truly am. But you need to realise that your life has value, even if you can't see it. And frankly, I don't want you to die."

The rate of my heartbeat quickened. I could feel my face heating up after she said that last sentence. _And frankly, I don't want you to die. _The words wouldn't stop playing back in my head. A wide smile formed on my face before I even knew my spirits had lifted.

"Thank you, Saeko-san," I said. "You … you really don't know how much it means to hear you say that."

Her smile widened slightly. "I think I have an idea," she said.

After a few moments of silence, I cleared my throat. "Well, I'd, er … I'd best be on my way." I noticed that her hand was still on my shoulder, and for the life of me I couldn't explain why I did what I did next. I grabbed her hand off my shoulder and planted a kiss on the back of it. Immediately, my face heated up to temperatures I didn't think it was physically possible for a human being to reach, and I started trying to stutter out an explanation. "S-sorry." That was all that I could get out before I quickly turned tail and walked out of the room.

_Why did you do that!? _I mentally berated myself. _Why did you have to go and do that, you fucking weirdo!? Do you have any idea how creepy that is!?_

The mental abuse I hurled at myself continued for a good long while.

* * *

Saeko is chuckling quietly to herself as she watches Paul walk out of the room as quickly as he can. Honestly, the kiss he'd placed on her hand was unexpected, but she can't say it particularly bothers her. In fact, she thinks it was a rather polite gesture. When a man is meeting a woman, he quite often kisses her on the hand, so it isn't exactly a stretch to assume that Paul kissing her on the hand was just a slightly more intimate way of thanking her for what she'd said.

_Or it could have been that huge crush he has on you taking over, _she thinks to herself. She has noticed the way he looks at her, and now that her mind isn't constantly flooding her with negative emotions when she sees him, she actually finds it quite flattering. Almost endearing, as a matter of fact.

She had told him the truth. She truly doesn't want him to die, and in her mind she knows that she never truly hated him to begin with. It was always just her mind unleashing aggression on the closest thing she could get to the one the aggression is truly meant for. She never hated Paul. In fact, seeing his lonely attitude despite being surrounded by friends a lot of the time has made her relate to him a little. She isn't antisocial, but knowing what she has known about herself ever since _that night _has made her feel more distant from people that she was before. Saeko sees much the same in Paul, but she has no idea what may have made him like this.

_Maybe you could ask him, _a tempting little voice in the back of her head tells her.

She'll admit that it's tempting, trying to connect with somebody who seems to be a kindred spirit in one way or another, but she is unsure, which is a rarity for her. She had only begun to truly talk to him a few days ago, and now the two of them are friends, but she doesn't want to overwhelm him by asking him something potentially _really _personal so bluntly. That's why she had given him the vague offer to talk in the car the day before.

Above all, however, she still primarily feels bad for the way she had treated him. Getting to know him these last few days, she has discovered that he truly deserves nothing she's given him in the past. She has learned that he likes children, he is rather skilled with a crossbow, he knows when the time has come to confront any major problems he sees, he has a strangely tender side to him when it comes to his friends, and that he's really cute when he's flustered.

…

Her face heats up at that last thought, and her face goes as red as it had been in the car the day before. It's clear to her now why she had been so embarrassed to have woken up like that with him. She realises what it is about _him _specifically that can get her this flustered. And now that she knows, Saeko thinks it should have been obvious to her from the beginning.

She has a crush on Paul Blake.

* * *

I had taken to wandering around the grounds outside when Takagi-san and Kouta had found me. Takagi-san had swiftly ordered me to come with them, which I did because it sounded like it was important. Walking back into the house, we found Takashi, Saeko-san, and Alice-chan talking near the entrance. The second I caught sight of Saeko-san, my previous embarrassment returned to me ten-fold, and I knew that my face had gone red again.

_Stupid impulsive shithead, _I berated myself again.

"Komuro," said Takagi-san.

"What have you guys been up to?" asked Takashi, looking confused.

"I think there's something we should all discuss."

"Can Alice come, too, Kouta-chan? Paul-chan?" Alice asked Kouta and I.

I couldn't help but smile widely at her, and neither could Kouta. "Of course," he said, giving her a thumbs up. "You and Zeke are part of our team."

"Come on, then, Alice-chan," I said, leaning down and holding my hand out. Alice-chan took my hand, and then we all walked off together. A few moments later, we were all crowding around a bed that had an incredibly annoyed looking Rei lying on it. She was lying on her stomach, probably trying not to put pressure on her back.

"I don't see why we have to meet here," said Rei, irritably.

"You can't move on your own yet, so we've no choice," said Marikawa-sensei. She was peeling a banana. "So, what did you want to talk about?" she asked Takagi-san.

"Whether or not we can stay with the group hereafter," said Takagi-san.

… _Well, that's certainly not what I expected, _I thought. I didn't know what she might have been getting at. But, then again, I had done little but wander around, keeping to myself, since we got to the Estate.

"On the same side …?" Rei asked.

"Sure we are," said Saeko-san. "We've just merged with a larger and more stable group. So …"

"That's right, we have two options!" said Takagi-san. "Go with them, or …"

"… we split up," Takashi said, finishing the thought for her. "But is there really any need to split up?"

Takagi-san narrowed her eyes at him, then pushed her way out onto the balcony, spreading her arms wide. "Just look around!" she yelled. "If that's not enough for you to get it, then you have no right to call me by my first name!"

I did look, and so did everyone else. I could see the city streets from up there, and it was chaos, even more so than before. The zombies were everywhere nearby, and although they clearly couldn't get anywhere near the house, it was still terrifying to see them all grouped up like that. If anything, it was even more terrifying now because we were all right in the centre of it.

"It's gotten even worse," said Takashi, who was looking down through the binoculars. Down below us, there were men loading heavy looking boxes into trucks. "Your old man's got skill. It's something only a Right-Wing V.I.P. could pull off. Your mum, too."

"Yeah, she's _amazing_!" Takagi-san said sarcastically. It was around this point that I knew this conversation was going somewhere I didn't like. "I used to be proud of that. Same goes for now. They were able to do all this in one day. But … if they can do that, then …"

"Takagi …" Takashi said.

"CALL ME BY MY FIRST NAME!" Takagi-san snapped at him, cutting off whatever he was saying.

"Don't think badly of your parents," Takashi carried on. "It's not the time for it. We're all having it rough right now."

"You sound just like my mum! I know! I know that my parents are amazing! The second they knew something was amiss, they took action and protected their property, their workers, and all their families! Incredible! Just incredible! They are truly awesome! And it's not like they forgot their little girl! She was _clearly _a priority!"

I know Takashi said something, but I didn't hear it. All of my attention was focused on what Takagi-san was saying, but believe me, it _wasn't _because I was on her side in this. In that moment I was _angry_. An anger I had literally never felt before was bubbling up in me, and, even after so many years of schooling my emotions, making sure nobody saw them, I didn't think I could hold this down. I was angrier than I had ever felt before, and _that _was saying something.

"It's _so _like them," Takagi-san continued, and my anger kept pushing me toward my breaking point. "They really are something, my mum and dad! To think that they instantly gave up on me since they figured there was no way I'd survive – ha!"

And then it all came boiling over …

"SHUT THE FUCK UP!" I bellowed at her, and everyone in the room stared at me in shock, but I really didn't give a damn. I was _pissed_. "You keep going on about how _bad _your parents are! Ha! You don't know _anything_, you spoiled brat! You have _no right _to complain! You _know _who your mother is, for starters, but I fucking don't! I've never had a fucking clue! And my dad, oh, don't even get me _started _on that old bastard! You think your parents are bad? Did they ever give you anything like _these_?" I pulled up the long sleeves I always wore to cover up my arms, and everyone let out gasps of shock that, in my rage-filled daze, I didn't even notice. On my arms were scars, _old _scars, but they were still there. Some of them were from broken bones, some were cuts, and there were even a few faded cigarette burns. "Do _your _parents come home and kick the fuck out of you just because they feel like it!? Do _your _parents starve you for days on end because they really don't care what happens to you!? Don't you _dare _talk to me about bad parenting, because I don't have _any _patience for spoiled little bitches complaining even though they have it better than almost _anyone _else!"

There was a stunned silence around the room. Now that I had gotten all of that out of my system, I suddenly felt horrified. I had just let _everything _out in front of all of them. They all knew, and now I was reliving every torturous moment of my childhood within my mind. Every beating, every verbal assault, every tiny little moment …

"I …" I said, but I was struggling to speak. I was now _very _aware of everybody looking at me. "I …" I couldn't get the words out, I just couldn't speak. So I did the only other thing that came to mind.

I ran out of the room.

I thought I heard some of them calling after me, but I paid it no mind. I needed to be alone. I couldn't take the looks they were giving me. I found a corner of the house where no one seemed to be and collapsed against one of the walls, falling to the floor and sitting down. For the first time in years, I couldn't keep control of what was bubbling up behind my eyes.

The tears fell, and there was a cascade of them.

* * *

The room is still silent. No one has said a word since Paul left, other than calling out to him while he was leaving. None of them can quite believe what just happened. Saya is the worst, though; she has a look of guilt on her face that none of them have ever seen before. Alice is crying, knowing that Paul is both angry and sad for some reason, but not fully understanding what is going on. But the one who looks the most concerned, the one who wants to chase after Paul and try to make him all right, is Saeko.

"I never knew that …" When someone finally speaks, it is Takashi. "I've known Paul for a few years now, but he never once mentioned anything like that …"

"He never said anything to me, either," says Kouta.

"… I knew …" Everyone looks at Shizuka when she speaks, and she hesitates before speaking again. "I had his medical records back at the school. He has to take pain killers on occasion because some of those old injuries have more … long lasting effects. The records said how the injuries were caused, so … I've known since he came to the school."

"And you didn't say anything?" Rei asks her, looking incredulous.

"It wasn't my place," Shizuka says, showing a rare firmness. "Regardless of what I know and what I don't, it's not my place to tell you all about someone else's past."

Things go quiet again. None of them really know what else to say. Paul's unwillingness to talk about the location of his family suddenly makes perfect sense to all of them.

"I'm going after him," Saeko says after more silence. "Someone needs to make sure he's all right."

Before anyone else can say anything, they're suddenly distracted by the fact that there seems to be an improvised military convoy driving through the gates and into the grounds of the Estate.

"What is that …?" Kouta asks.

"It's the leader of the Prefecture's Nationalist Right-Wing group," says Saya, her voice lacking much emotion. The convoy stops, and a man gets out of one of the cars, being greeted by Saya's mother. "The man who's decided all on his own what's right and what's wrong … My father …"

* * *

**Paul's breakdown was a lot more intense this time around, huh? He certainly revealed a lot more than he did last time, and now you guys know why I was so specific about him keeping his sleeves long back in chapter one. I hope I did well with this new version of events.**

**Paul kissing Saeko on the hand was a bit of a weird moment, I'll admit, but we've all done weird shit on impulse before, or at the very least _thought _about it. His emotions were running wild this chapter, so it's not too unrealistic to think he'd do some things without really thinking about them until afterwards. We got some development out of it, anyhow.**

**I hope you've all enjoyed, and I'll see you next time, Constant Readers!**


	9. Survival vs Stupidity

**Welcome to the edited chapter nine of _Zombies and High School Kids_! When I originally wrote the last chapter, one of my friends messaged me on Facebook and told me that he found Paul's outburst funny. I'm still not sure how to take that, 'cause it was supposed to be dramatic and emotional. Still, however people reacted to it, I'm glad I was able to at least make it work.**

**I'm gonna be combining chapters again this time around, because nine and ten were really short last time. Hope you enjoy, Constant Readers.**

**Let's begin.**

* * *

Survival vs. Stupidity

I don't know how much I missed. I went outside to try and clear my head, and that's when I saw what the others were no doubt looking at at that very moment. The tears had long since stopped flowing, but my eyes were itchy and irritated, and I had no doubt that they were red and bloodshot. What I saw when I got outside was a man whose aura radiated strength in every possible sense of the word. He was a big guy with jet black hair, orange eyes, and the gaze of a predatory animal. He was standing next to a cage, in which was a lone zombie. That alone would have been enough to get my attention, but the katana sword that this large man had sheathed at his hip held my attention even more. I leaned myself against an out of the way tree so that I could observe without having to get close.

"This man's name is Tetsutarou Doi," the big man said. His voice matched the intimidation factor of his appearance. The large crowd of survivors that watched on was silent. "A comrade and friend who has worked with us for more than a quarter of a century! In the middle of a rescue mission, he tried to save one of his men … and was bitten! He sacrificed himself! That's the noblest act a man can perform! However … he is no longer human! He has been reduced to nothing more than a deadly fiend!" The man began to unsheath the blade. "And that is why I now … will show this final act of mercy to our friend!"

The zombie in the cage had been getting more and more agitated as this man's speech went on. One of the many armed guards surrounding the area walked over and opened the cage. The zombie immediately lunged out with surprising speed, only for the intimidating man to swiftly and effectively swing his sword at the undead monster and slice its head clean off. The head tumbled away from the body, and the body went still. The survivors watching gasped in shock, and that shock only seemed to increase once everyone realised that the head was still alive.

"Farewell …" the man said, lifting his leg and bringing his foot down on the zombie's head, crushing it and ending its undead life for good, "… friend." He turned around to face the gathered crowd. "This is our reality now! Even if they were wonderful friends, beloved family, or lovers, we must dispose of them without hesitation! If you want to live, FIGHT!"

The crowd was mostly silent, with the occasional muttering being heard. That little display had certainly made some waves.

I thought I knew who that guy was now. He was clearly in charge here. Hell, he had just done something that both displayed his power _and _shocked some of the people into a fighting attitude. I could already see that It could only be Takagi-san's father.

Thinking of Takagi-san brought a scowl to my face. I shouldn't have felt this angry, no matter what she had said, but I couldn't help myself. She knew _nothing_.

After a while, everyone dispersed. I thought I saw Kouta leaving the house, and he didn't look like he was in a good mood. _You and me both, buddy, _I thought. I didn't go to talk to him, though. I wasn't nearly in the mood for social interaction, even if it was to see what was wrong with somebody. At that moment, all I really wanted to do was stay as far away from the others as possible. After my explosion of emotion, I just didn't think I'd be able to bring myself to face them.

That whole … that whole outburst made me feel awful when I thought about it. It wasn't the kind of awful you get when you say something you shouldn't to your friend; it was the awful you get when you remember something you _really _don't want to remember. The whole reason I kept my father's abuse a secret was because I didn't want to remember it, but the way I had blurted it all out in that room had brought all the memories rushing back, and now I felt like I had just relived the entire thing. I hated feeling like I did back then, so terrified all the time. It made me feel weak, and that brought on an even worse feeling …

… that maybe my father was _right _when he used to call me that …

I balled my hands into fists. My teeth clenched together. _That's bullshit and you know it, _I told myself angrily. _Are you really letting that sadistic fuck back into your head after all this time? Don't be ridiculous. You've survived so far, and you are anything but weak. Maybe not as strong as some others, but enough to _survive_, and do you really think you'd have survived all this if you were weak?_

No. No, I wouldn't have.

My anger died down and my posture relaxed, but I still felt like complete shit due to the memories playing through my head like a fucking home video. I doubted that feeling would go away any time soon …

"Here you are." The second I heard the voice, my head snapped to the side. It was Saeko-san. She looked concerned. She looked slightly hesitant – which was certainly unlike her – like she didn't know exactly how to handle this kind of situation. "Are you …" She sighed. "What am I asking? Of course you're not okay. Would you … would you like to talk about it?"

"What is there to talk about?" I asked bitterly, breaking eye contact with her. "I think I said enough for all of you to get a pretty clear picture." I suddenly remembered that Alice-chan had been in the room, and sighed to myself. I hoped she wasn't too frightened by my outburst.

"The others, they're all worried about you," said Saeko-san. "_I'm _worried about you, Paul-kun." I found my eyebrow raising at the slightly more affectionate honorific, but decided to ignore it, thinking it was probably just her attempting to draw me out of my metaphorical shell. Her hand rested on my shoulder, and my face went slightly red when I thought about the previous time this happened. "The offer I made in the car still stands. You can talk to me."

I swallowed down the feelings that were keeping me from speaking just enough to say: "It _hurts _to talk about. Hell, it hurts to _think _about."

"Then talk about it and get it over with," she said. The hand not on my shoulder moved to hold my cheek, bringing my face so that I was once again making eye contact with her. "I want to _help_ you, Paul-kun, if you'll let me."

I honestly considered telling her everything in that moment. Her face, so close, was more beautiful than I had ever seen it. She was offering to listen to everything I had to say, to share my pain in a sense, and I felt the pace of my heart pick up thinking about it. To share with her the worst years of my life, something I had never truly told anyone about, was oddly appealing …

"You've been crying …" she said, looking directly into my probably bloodshot eyes.

She was so _close _… I could almost _kiss _her …

All of this was brought to an end when I saw Takashi running quite frantically from the corner of my eye. His face was one of concern and worry. Alice-chan was with him, and she, too, looked worried.

"They're in a hurry," I said, nodding toward him. Saeko-san looked, too, and her eyes narrowed as I'm sure mine had. "I think we'd better go see what's wrong …"

The two of us took off running in the direction Takashi and Alice-chan had been going in. We rounded a corner, and what I saw made me clench my teeth in unspoken anger. Kouta was kneeling on the floor, holding a bunch of guns to his chest like they were the most important things in the world to him. Surrounding him was a group of men, all of whom looked incredibly irritated and angry. The fact that they were surrounding him with expressions like that made me have a brief flashback to our days at school, specifically when I would sometimes find him being bullied by other students in the corridors. I had first met him in one of those situations, actually – I had helped him and we had just hit it off from there.

"NO!" Kouta yelled, presumably in denial to something the men had just said.

"Come on, you get with the times," said one of the men. "You can't keep all those weapons for yourself. Give them to us …"

"No!" Kouta said again. "I borrowed these. And besides … nobody else here can handle them as well as I can."

"Why, you!" one of the men said, almost in a growl. "Yoshioka-san asked nicely, and you go and act all selfish!"

"We're telling you, we'll be using them to protect everybody here!" said one of the others.

"Hey," another one said to the others. "Who cares about him?"

"You fuckers take one more step towards him, and I'll put an arrow somewhere you _really _don't want it going," I said, gritting my teeth, whilst aiming my crossbow at a random member of the small crowd.

They looked at me in anger and even a little fear. But before any of them could speak, a familiar, intimidating voice rang out near us.

"WHAT'S ALL THE COMMOTION!?"

It was Takagi-san's father.

"Ch-Chief," one of the men surrounding Kouta stuttered out when they caught sight of his imposing figure.

"Th-this kid thinks guns are toys!" said another one.

"Young man," said Chief Takagi, turning his hard gaze on Kouta. "What is your name? I am Souichiro Takagi. Leader of the Devout Patriots' League."

"K-K-Kouta Hirano, second year in Class B at Fujimi High, seat 32!" Kouta exclaimed with some struggle.

"I sense spirit in your voice, Hirano-kun!" Chief Takagi said loudly. "You must have gone through unspeakable pain to have made it this far."

"Honey," Takagi-san's mother, whose name I had learned was Yuriko, said to her husband. "This child is …"

"I've been briefed by the associated class." Chief Takagi's interruption was sudden and unapologetic. He continued to look down at Kouta. "So you refuse to relinquish your guns." It didn't sound like a question.

"If I lose my guns …" Kouta started to say, hesitating, looking both frightened and determined at the same time, "… I … I'll go back to how I used to be! It'll revert me back! And I think I've finally found something I'm good at!"

"And what's that?"

Tears flowed from Kouta's eyes as he struggled to come up with an answer.

"That's protecting your daughter!" Takashi said suddenly. He had a hard expression on his face, and I highly suspected that I had an equally hard one on my own, but I had no way of knowing at the time. Nevertheless, when Takashi moved forward, so did I. Saeko-san did, too.

"K-Komuro …" said Kouta.

"Komuro …" said Chief Takagi, a thoughtful look on his face. "I see. I remember your name. You've known Saya for a long time."

"Yes," said Takashi. "But since this hell's broken loose, Saya … I mean, your daughter's been protected this whole time by Hirano."

"Yeah," I said, glaring. "And if you'd please excuse my foul language, it's pretty shitty of your men to just assume he can't do anything with those guns. He was out there with them, he came in here with them, and he'll damn well _keep _them. He's better with those guns than all of us combined, and I think he might even be able to put a few of your men to shame." There was a barely concealed anger behind my words. The idea that we were untrustworthy with weapons and such because of our age, like the fact that we were teenagers made us completely incapable, _really _made my blood boil. It almost made me forget what had been plaguing my mind for almost an hour now. Almost.

"Kouta-chan!" Alice exclaimed, running over to him and giving him a hug. She turned a glare on Chief Takagi, a glare that was more cute than threatening.

Marikawa-sensei turned up, helping Rei to stand by offering a shoulder. Rei quickly switched to being held up by Takashi. The lot of us stood around Kouta, forming a sort of protective circle around him as we glared at the men in front of us.

"We have witnessed his bravery with our own eyes, Chief Takagi," said Saeko-san.

"Me, too, dad!" Takagi-san said as she turned up to join us. "He's wicked short and a hopeless war fanatic, but … if it weren't for him, I'd be with my other classmates right now, dad! He looked out for me! Not you, dad!"

Chief Takagi kept his intimidating stare levelled at us, but there was something else in his face now. I couldn't tell what it was, but if I had to guess, I'd say it was respect or something of the like. Mrs Takagi smiled at us, though her eyes were unsurprisingly focused on Takagi-san.

While it never actually happened, I'm sure Chief Takagi came dangerously close to smiling when he next spoke. "You heard them," he said to his men. "Hirano-kun keeps his guns."

"But, sir—" one of the men started to protest.

"That's an order!" Chief Takagi's commanding tone left room for no arguments.

"Y-Yes, Chief Takagi …" The men quickly dispersed, presumably to go and do the jobs they were _supposed _to be doing whilst they were harassing Kouta.

Chief Takagi and Mrs Takagi seemed like they were about to walk away, as well, but another one of their subordinates walked over in quite a hurry and whispered something into Chief Takagi's ear. Somehow, Chief Takagi's face turned even grimmer, and he turned back to us in order to speak to Takagi-san.

"Why do _I _have to do that!?" Takagi-san asked angrily in response to what she had been told to do.

"My daughter is not so inept that she needs an explanation to understand!" said Chief Takagi.

"Saya, I'm asking this of you, too," said Mrs Takagi, much more gently than her husband. "Those people are too much on their guard when it comes to your father and me."

"I … I'll come with you!" said Kouta.

"Me, too," said Takashi.

"Me, too …" Rei, tried to say, but then Marikawa-sensei came up behind her.

"No you don't, Miyamoto-san," she said in a chiding tone. "I'm applying another dose of medicine on you starting now." The sudden burst of speed and energy Rei got as she tried to escape Marikawa-sensei was no surprise to any of us.

"Ah, fuck it, I'm in," I said. I needed something to do, something to take my mind off all the negative feelings that had been dragged up in the last hour or so. And I knew that I couldn't afford to let the animosity that now stood between Takagi-san and I stay there. If our group was divided in any way, shape, or form, it was liable to _really _screw us over in the long run, and I refused to let my personal anger at someone to be the thing that brought our group down.

"I will escort her, as well," said Saeko-san.

"No," Chief Takagi said to her. "I want you with me for a little while, daughter of Busujima-sensei."

"… If you say so, sir," said Saeko-san, sounding surprised.

I didn't know how I felt about that. Because she was the one who found me and tried to comfort me after my outburst, I felt more attached to her than I had before. Something about being separated from her just felt … wrong to me. I certainly wasn't going to say any of this out loud, however.

"Alice's coming with Saya-chan, too!" said Alice.

"Alice-chan, maybe you could come with me," said Mrs Takagi, leaning down and offering a hand. "I have a present for Zeke-chan."

"A present …?" asked Alice. "Okay! Isn't that great, Zeke!?" The small dog in her arms barked happily as they walked off with Mrs Takagi.

Those of us who stayed could already see the group of people we were expected to talk to. They were all huddled together, whispering to each other like they were plotting or something like that. As the voices got louder, we could hear what they were saying, and it didn't bode well. They were spouting off crap about how killing the zombies was wrong because they were suffering from the "Murder Syndrome," and that we should be helping them. The second I heard what they were saying, I knew that this wasn't going to be in any way easy, and Takagi-san probably wouldn't be able to do anything about this. People like this were basically impossible to reason with.

The long, _long _conversation we had with them proved that well enough.

"How many times do I have to repeat myself!?" Takagi-san asked aggressively after we'd had the same conversation with these people several times. " 'Murder Syndrome' is utter nonsense! It's obviously a lie the government spread to keep chaos from erupting when they couldn't admit that 'they' can't be explained by science!"

"Then you're saying the dead really _can _move around?" a man asked, incredulous. "Absurd! There's no doubt it's some new form of infectious disease!"

"My fa— I mean, Chief Takagi intended to demonstrate that 'they' are completely different to humans, you see?" said Takagi-san. "And in school, I saw … as you all did around town … plenty of evidence to that, too, right!? Anyway, there's no way anyone can credibly explain how 'they' continue to move after death!"

"Say what you like," said the same man. "But this phenomenon is happening nonetheless, so there must be some definite cause."

"Yeah!" said the woman who appeared to be the ringleader. "It couldn't be happening for no good reason!"

"If so, then fine, but it's impossible for amateurs to figure it out, okay?" said Takagi-san. "We have to give the professionals plenty of time in a stable environment so they can calmly conduct research! I'm sorry, but we're just not cut out for that. Or are you guys something special?"

The woman had her mouth agape, struggling to find ways to respond, and it was absolutely _glorious _to observe.

"_Holy shit, she just got owned,_" I whispered to Takashi and Kouta, trying to hold in my laughter as they did the same.

"You can't, right?" Takagi-san continued, seeming to gain confidence. "We're going to survive without getting eaten by 'them!' There's nothing more important than that! And my dad showed you what we have to do, okay?"

The second the words "my dad" exited Takagi-san's mouth, the look on the woman's face told me that we had just lost this argument.

"… I see now," said the woman, a devious smirk worming its way onto her face. "So that's what you were getting at, eh!? I was wondering how gun-wielding highschoolers like you ended up with them …! That explains it! She's the daughter of that Right-Wing Mobster Group! Threats and violence! And after what the world's become and countless people in trouble! Everyone, listen to me! This girl is the daughter of a man who advocates murder. And she's telling us to become murderers, too!"

"Uh … what on Earth are you guys talking about?" Takashi asked.

"Yeah, you guys are sounding more bat-shit crazy by the second," I said.

"This is no place for kids to butt in!" the woman yelled at us.

I suddenly had to _really _hold back the urge to introduce her face to one of the arrows in my quiver.

"K-Kids …?" Takashi asked, shaking with rage. "You have no idea what we've been through …"

"QUIET!" the woman snapped. "The adults are going to decide what to do now! Not some beastly mobster gang or highschoolers drunk on violence, but peace-loving adults!" She turned to the crowd getting riled up behind her. "Everyone, let us all gather our thoughts and decide on a spokesman! Then we will meet with Chief Takagi and organise humanitarian relief for those in need …!"

The others, realising we had lost, began to walk away. I, however, couldn't resist taking the opportunity to make these people absolutely hate me.

"Well, peace-loving adults," I said to them. "Thank you for volunteering to be the meat shields while we all get out of this alive, it's really very noble of you. Good day!"

The looks they sent me were murderous, but it was worth it to mess with them a little. The others were laughing at me when I got back to them; even Takagi-san, oddly enough. I gave Kouta a high five. "Kind of ironic that they're using a riot to preach peace, isn't it?" I said.

"Tell me about it," said Kouta. Then he looked at Takagi-san. "Takagi-san, you … you were great out there."

"I sucked," said Takagi-san, scoffing.

"They were too harsh," said Takashi. "With the world going to pot, they'd go so far as to mock the Takagi name."

"That's because the Mafia and Right-Wing groups are so similar …" said Kouta.

"My family's different!" Takagi-san said indignantly. "My dad's so Right-Wing it'd make Yukio Mishima faint! He doesn't even get along with the Mafia or corrupt Right-Wing groups. They've even tried to take his life!"

"But they require a lot of money for their activities," said Kouta. "Even if he's an ideological Right-Wing, while gathering under the pretext of money from businesses and the like …"

"I may be a genius, but … my mum is a genius! She used to be an infamous trader on Wall Street. When she returned to Japan on holiday, she met my dad at a party and married him the next day. Ever since then she's used her skills only for my dad. After marrying my mum, my dad's assets grew a hundred fold."

"That's amazing …" said Kouta.

"As someone who's seen the movie _The_ _Wolf of Wall Street_, that entire story kind of makes me concerned," I said.

"Either way," Takashi said, cutting in, "have they really … not been seeing what's going on?"

"They probably shut their eyes to it!" Takagi-san said angrily.

"I kind of understand how they must feel," said Kouta.

"Are you trying to start a fight with me, porky!?" Takagi-san yelled at him.

"Th-That's not what I mean! People try not to see what they don't want to. Nobody wants to be denied, so most people, even if they know that something is going on … don't do anything about it."

"But in this case, they have to recognise that something's drastically changed."

"Yeah, it's kinda hard to ignore flesh-eating corpses and live," I said. Just being in the group again, debating something, made me forget my anger at her from before.

"Y-Yeah, but …" said Kouta. "At times like that, the first reaction is … to try and make things how they were. No matter what it is. Sometimes, even if they know from the start that it's not going to work. As for why …"

"… It's because if they don't recognise the change, they don't have to recognise their own shortcomings and mistakes," Takagi-san said, finishing for him. There was a smile on her face.

"Y-Yeah," said Kouta. "I, uh …" he coughed into his hand, "thought of that after some stuff that happened at school."

Takagi-san hummed, looking at him with a smile on her face. "I see you in a whole new light." Coming from her, that was high praise.

"That was … really deep," I said. "Kouta, has anyone ever told you that you're fantastic?" It was at around this point that we noticed Takashi's lack of speech. Looking at him, I noticed that he was simply standing there, a thoughtful expression in place on his face.

"What is it?" Takagi-san asked him.

"I've learned something new," said Takashi, and that was it.

Takagi-san, Kouta, and I stood in silence for a few moments, but then large grins broke out on all our faces when the three of us all seemed to have the same thought at the same time.

"That must be what it is …" said Takagi-san.

"What?" Takashi asked, confused. "It may be embarrassing, but at least I'm acknowledging it, okay?"

"Don't you two agree that's why?" Takagi-san asked Kouta and I.

"Yeah, probably," said Kouta. "Almost definitely."

"You've got that right," I said.

Our exchange only seemed to confuse Takashi even more. "What are you trying to say?" he asked in exasperation.

"Did you forget?" Takagi-san asked him. "That's exactly why you're our leader!"

Takashi looked even more confused than before, and maybe even a little terrified, too. Fortunately for him, however, the moment ended when we could hear Rei screaming through the open window of her room. It would seem Marikawa-sensei had finally caught her.

There wasn't really much said after that. Takashi left to go and do his own thing, and Takagi-san, Kouta, and I were left on our own. The atmosphere wasn't awkward in the slightest, which was surprising. Despite that, however, I still found that I wanted to spend some time alone with my thoughts. And I was feeling a little tired, so …

"I'm gonna go take a nap," I said to Takagi-san and Kouta. "Y'know, while it's still _safe _enough to take a nap. I doubt I'm gonna get the chance again for quite some time. See you two later."

I wandered off to find a spot to take my nap. It didn't take me long to find a tree outside a small building which looked like some kind of dojo. I sat myself down against the tree, closed my eyes, and just let everything go for a while.

Falling asleep had honestly never felt so nice before.

* * *

I was roused awake by the sound of footsteps coming toward me. I had never been a particularly heavy sleeper, but it would normally have taken a little more than footsteps to wake me from my slumber. Maybe I was becoming more attuned to the situation we were in, and thus my body took the sound of someone coming toward me as a sign of danger … I wouldn't have been surprised if that were the case. I opened my eyes, rubbing them groggily, allowing a yawn to escape from my lips, and saw that the person coming toward me was Saeko-san. There was something different about her now, too.

"Damn, that is a _really _long sword," I said, eyeing the _actual _sword she now had sheathed at her hip.

"Indeed," she said. "It is also an incredibly rare one."

"Well, I'm sure they couldn't have given it to anyone who'd use it better," I said, quite sincerely. "The way you used your wooden sword was a sight to behold; I can only _imagine _how good you'll be with the real thing."

"Thank you." She smiled quite widely at me, then frowned a little. "Why are you out here on your own?"

"Thinking and sleeping." I stood up from my spot against the tree and brushed myself down. "I was a little … let's say, emotionally exhausted after the shit that went down in Rei's room. I just needed to clear my head, and sleep seemed the best way to do it. So, what are you doing? You seem to be headed somewhere."

"I need to speak with Komuro-kun. It's in regard to his—"

"Role as the leader of the group?" I guessed. She nodded. "Looks like we're all on the same page, at least. I spent some time discussing it with Takagi-san and Kouta earlier, and Takashi seemed all stressed out about it."

"He doesn't seem confident in his own abilities," she said in agreement. "It is a problem that must be fixed if we are to continue."

"All right, then. So, we gonna go talk to him?"

"We?" She raised an eyebrow.

I shrugged. "It'll probably go better if there's more than one of us talking to him. The entire group would be preferable, but that'll probably just stress him out more." What I failed to mention was that I just wanted to spend some more time with her.

"Very well." She smiled. "Shall we go, then?"

I smiled, nodded, and the two of us walked off together to go and find Takashi. We didn't speak while we walked, which was okay. It was strangely … comfortable, to be honest. There was nothing awkward or uncomfortable about the silence, and the fact that I could be this comfortable in complete silence with somebody was comforting, especially considering it was her. It started to occur to me that maybe I was feeling a little _too _attached to her after the events of earlier in the day. But some part of me didn't really care.

When we got to Takashi's room, I could feel a certain atmosphere from inside. I got the feeling that somebody else was in there with him, and Saeko-san seemed to get the same feeling, so we opted to wait outside.

When the door finally opened, it was Rei who came out, and she didn't look the happiest I'd ever seen her.

" 'Sup, Rei?" I said in greeting.

"We felt the mood in there, so we waited," said Saeko-san. "We didn't hear anything."

Rei looked between Saeko-san and I for a few moments with a scrutinising gaze. After a few moments of this, she smiled for some reason unknown to me. "Takashi will probably be happy to see you two, Senpai," she said to Saeko-san.

"Would you stop calling me Senpai?" Saeko-san asked her before she could walk away. "The truth is, we're …"

"Don't ever mention that!" Rei snapped suddenly. "I don't want to remember." By the time she'd left, the smile on her face had vanished completely.

"Okay …" I said. "Making a note to never mention that we should be in the same year." I put a hand on the door and turned to Saeko-san. "So, shall we?" There was an involuntary grin on my face. I wasn't entirely sure why it was there.

Saeko-san nodded, and the both of us walked into the room to discuss with Takashi his role as the leader.

* * *

**What do you think, Constant Readers? The aftermath of Paul's little outburst last chapter is still being felt by just about everyone, and you'll be seeing the results of that soon enough. Paul and Saeko are bonding, and that's always good. Next chapter is the last of the Takagi Estate stuff – I'm gonna be combining those two chapters, too – and then I'm done with my editing process!**

**Now, before I go, I'm gonna answer the reviews I originally answered when I wrote up this chapter.**

**xbox432: **I think it's mostly because Saya scares the crap out of them, and they're too intimidated to call her by her first name. Though that'll change soon enough.

**adonxxxjuri: **I did consider having him do that, but I didn't really envision him as the type to just smack someone.

**Next chapter sees the return of Shidou and the fall of the Takagi Estate, so it should be pretty fun. And after that I can get back to releasing new chapters (though whether they're for this story or not really depends on the results of the poll on my profile page). It's been recommended to me that I should post a new chapter for this once I'm done editing, so I will do that. It'll let me get onto the shrine scene, anyway, and I've been looking forward to writing that out for a long time now.**

**I'll see you next time, Constant Readers!**


	10. That Escalated Quickly

**Hello again, Constant Readers, and welcome to chapter 10! I've combined two of the old chapters once again in order to make this longer, which means that this is the last edited chapter I'll have to release before I can release the newest chapter! Hope you're all excited, because I certainly am.**

**Let's begin.**

* * *

That Escalated Quickly

I had one word for what I was looking at: Awesome.

The vehicle I was looking at with Takagi-san, Kouta, Marikawa-sensei, and Alice-chan – who was holding Zeke, as usual – didn't have a proper roof, nor did it have doors. Most of its features were simply metal bars. It had eight wheels. It wouldn't seem like it was much to look at for most people, but I knew what this thing was. I was honestly surprised that the Takagis' mechanic, Matsudo-san, had one of these.

"HEY!" Matsudo-san yelled to someone. "You kids! Over here!" Takashi and Rei both approached from a little way away. "Well? Not bad, right?"

"Fucking _amazing _is more like it," I said, running my fingers along the metal bars. "You've really outdone yourself, man. And what did you say before? That this thing can drive on water?" Matsudo-san nodded, smiling widely. "Oh, I fucking _want _one …" While I didn't usually take much interest in things like cars and other vehicles, something like this was definitely an exception.

"It's an Argo All-Terrain Assault Buggy!" Matsudo-san explained to Takashi and Rei. "Or as they call them these days, an ATV. Capable of traversing any kind of territory. Yamaha's got the most famous four-wheeled models, but … when it comes to eight wheels, this is it. It won't be rolling over any time soon, I can tell you that for nothing."

"I … I don't know if I'd be able to drive it …" said Takashi.

_Oh, I'd definitely figure it out given half a chance, _I thought, managing to keep my reverence of the ATV to myself.

"You handled that motorcycle without a licence, right?" asked Matsudo-san. "It drives like a bike, more or less. They actually cancelled these things midway through production, so this is the released military model. It's way more solid than the civilian model. Take her for a spin!"

Takashi, after a few moments of thought, climbed into the ATV and grabbed onto the handlebars it had instead of steering wheels. He revved the engine some. The ATV jerked into motion very suddenly, and Takashi gave a slight yell of surprise. He drove forward a fair distance before turning the ATV around and driving back again. That thing looked like it ran like a charm, and my admiration for the vehicle only increased upon seeing it move.

"How was it?" asked Matsudo-san. "This thing should be able to burst through those monsters easy. Like your friend Paul said, this thing's amphibious. So if you're in a real spot, take it to the river. Better yet, run it around the river shore or park it if you can. It's actually preferable to take it into the water, since the water-use tire traction deteriorates quickly on the pavement."

Takashi let out an awkward chuckle.

"Are you really planning on going with just the two of you?" Takagi-san asked Takashi and Rei. She was asking what we all wanted to know. We were all irritated that Takashi and Rei were planning on leaving without the rest of us; Takagi-san was just the only one to say so out loud.

"… It's my and Rei's parents we're talking about," said Takashi. "I can't inconvenience you and the gang, Saya."

I very nearly cringed at what Takashi had just said. "So we're 'the gang' now, are we?" I asked him. I turned to Matsudo-san with a cheeky grin on my face. "Sorry to say, man, but we're gonna need a blue and green van here, pronto. Preferably with big orange lettering on the side. We already have a dog, but he could stand to be a little bigger."

"Shut up, baka!" Takagi-san yelled at me. Frankly, I think she was just irritated because Matsudo-san was laughing. She turned back to Takashi. "But you brought us all here, didn't you?"

"It was only because your house was the closest, remember?" he said. He smiled a little. "Besides, this isn't goodbye for good. We're planning on bringing our families back here, too, okay?"

"And you wouldn't lie about something like this, right?" she asked him. I was rather surprised to see a smile forming on her face. "Fine, go! Say hi to your mum for me!"

"… Could I tag along?" I asked suddenly. I felt my cheeks heat up when everyone started looking at me. "Well … I mean … I don't really think I'm of any use around here. Kouta's good with the guns; Taka—" _Ah, screw it, _I thought. "Saya-san is really smart. I don't like feeling useless, so … I figured I'd help you guys out." I smiled awkwardly. For some reason or another, saying out loud that I felt useless around here was much more embarrassing than thinking it, and I was hesitating in my speech much more than usual. That, and I wanted to do my best to keep everyone's attention off my little outburst. I knew I was going to have to talk about it eventually, but eventually didn't necessarily mean soon, so …

Takashi seemed to think about if for a moment. He turned to Rei. "What do you think?" he asked her. She seemed to think for a moment, then nodded. Takashi turned back to me. "Okay, then. You're in."

I smiled at him in thanks and nodded once.

The sound of Zeke barking caught my attention. Then Alice-chan said, "Miss Saeko … you look stunning." I turned to look and saw how right she was.

Saeko-san was back in her school uniform, but it was heavily modified. The top half was relatively the same, the only new addition being the black elbow-guards. On her legs she wore a pair of black stockings that reached up to just past her knees and a pair of black combat boots that reached to just below her knees. Her skirt was ripped up the side. She still had that sword sheathed at her side. There was a radiant smile on her face.

"S-Saeko-san …" was all I could bring myself to say. I was unashamed to say she had stunned me into silence.

Rei looked between Saeko-san and I for a few moments, then a devious smirk formed on her face. "That the reaction you wanted to get out of him?" she asked her, confusing me greatly. "I think it's working."

"You look impressive, but isn't it a little early to be getting geared up?" Takashi asked Saeko-san.

"I want to come with you," said Saeko-san.

"Oh, really?" Rei asked, still smirking. "I wonder _why _that is …" She made some gesture in my direction with her head, but I was still confused.

"I think I could be of some help, don't you?" said Saeko-san, twisting the sword in its sheath so that we could all see it properly. "Even if you succeed in finding your families, without enough people you'll never get them back here safely."

"AAAAH!" Marikawa-sensei screamed suddenly, surprising me out of the stupor I had fallen into. Whatever this was, it must have been good, as Marikawa-sensei had hugged onto Alice-chan and had an incredibly wide smile on her face. "I did it! I did it! I remembered! I remembered my friend's cell phone number! Since I didn't have my own cell phone or appointment book with me, I couldn't remember until now!"

"You mean your friend who had all the guns and the Humvee?" Takashi asked her.

"Yep!" said Marikawa-sensei, releasing Alice-chan so that the poor girl could breath again. Zeke gave an angry bark after having been sandwiched between the two, but it soon stopped when Alice-chan began to pet him. "She's in a special unit of the prefectural police … Since she's a member of the SAT, she must be alive. If we could hook up with her, it'd be _amazing_! But now I need a phone! A phone!"

"You can use mine …" said Takashi. He began to reached into his pocket, but stopped short. I looked where he was looking, and saw that Rei's expression had darkened quite heavily. It was actually rather scary to look at. "Rei? What's the ma—" Before he could even finish, Rei ran off, growling in rage. I looked in the direction she was running, and saw something that left me with my mouth agape. "No way …"

"I'd have thought that bastard would be dead by now …" I muttered under my breath.

Just by the front of the house, near a bus that had a small group of high school students slowly stepping out of it, was Shidou.

Takashi started to run over to Rei, who was holding Shidou at gunpoint, and I followed. Rei looked angrier than I had ever seen her, and I could see that she was ready and willing to kill Shidou if given even half a reason.

"I KNEW THE TRUTH!" Rei shouted angrily. It would appear that I had missed some of what she'd said. "YOU'RE THE ONLY ONE WHO COULD HAVE MESSED WITH MY GRADES! BUT I PUT UP WITH IT! BECAUSE I WAS TOLD THAT IF MY FATHER'S INVESTIGATION WENT WELL ENOUGH, BOTH YOU _AND _REPRESENTATIVE SHIDOU COULD BE ARRESTED!" She took a few deep breaths, appearing to calm down, if only slightly. "But … not any more …" She pushed the sharp end of her bayonet against Shidou's cheek and pushed. A thin trickle of blood ran down Shidou's chin.

"Y-You plan on killing me?" Shidou asked. His voice was shaky, but his face told a different story. He was smirking. He looked almost like he was _daring _her to do it. "You, the daughter of a police officer, would become a murderer?"

"I DON'T WANT TO HEAR IT … NOT FROM THE LIKES OF YOU!" If anything, it sounded like Shidou had somehow made her even angrier.

"Then you should kill him!" came the naturally loud voice of Chief Takagi. That constant glare on his face seemed somehow more intense. Shidou looked genuinely scared now. "I've been involved with that man's father in the past! But now it means nothing! If you want to, kill him! Of course. If I had the need, I'd do the same!"

Takashi made to move forward, but Saeko-san grasped his arm to stop him. She and the others had come over a few moments before.

"Miyamoto-san has to decide for herself," said Saeko-san.

"She's right, Takashi," I said. It wasn't just because of my feelings for Saeko-san that I agreed, either. As a matter of fact, in any ordinary situation, I would have tried to stop her myself. But this seemed a lot more personal than any normal situation. "She's the one who has a problem with Shidou. Well, okay, we _all _have a problem with Shidou, but she seems to have it worst. If what he's done is so bad that Rei feels the need to kill him, then who are we to stop her?"

Takashi didn't seem happy about it, but he backed down.

"Go ahead … kill me!" Shidou said with renewed confidence. "Kill me and spend the rest of your life suffering for what you have done! That would be the highest form of education I could ever give a student like you as your teacher!"

I – along with everyone else – watched on with bated breath as I waited to see what would happen. Shidou held his arms out wide, practically inviting Rei to kill him then and there. I honestly didn't know whether or not I wanted Rei to do it. I didn't know the specifics of why Rei hated Shidou so much – I had arrived a little too late to hear the specifics – but while part of me wanted Shidou dead for being the perverted, manipulative bastard that he was, another part of me thought that Rei killing him in cold blood would start us all on a downward spiral that would lead to us becoming something we didn't like. Considering the nature of our situation, I wasn't sure whether or not that could be considered a good thing.

After a few moments, Rei took a deep breath and stepped away from Shidou. Shidou visibly deflated, losing all his confidence. I released a breath of relief, showing that I was a lot more sure of the outcome I wanted than I thought I was. Becoming cold-blooded killers was a step I didn't want to take just yet.

"… So that's your decision?" asked Chief Takagi.

"He's not even worth killing," Rei said simply.

"Well said!" said Chief Takagi.

Shidou was seething, shaking with rage. I found the look on his face rather amusing.

"You may leave!" Chief Takagi yelled at Shidou. He moved his eyes over to the students that came in with Shidou. "Same goes for you there. You're already sullied by his ludicrous teachings! Normally, we would be able to restrain you, but … I don't have time for that now! Get back to your bus and go!"

Shidou and his students were forced back onto the bus, then they drove away.

"Do you think it's unforgivable?" Mrs Takagi asked Takashi, who had a conflicted look on his face. I hadn't even realised she was there.

"We can't just accept them, but …" Takashi seemed to hesitate, "… I don't know what I would do if I were in Chairman Takagi's position … I really don't know. I'm sorry."

"I commend your honesty," said Chief Takagi. "But there's no changing it now! If you want to survive, learn your lesson quickly."

"Uh … yes, sir," said Takashi. Saya-san's parents walked away from us, and Takashi turned to Rei, who was looking away from all of us. "Hey …"

"Don't try to console me, you'll only make it worse!" Rei snapped at him. "You're always like that! Whenever I wanted to talk to you about Shidou. That's why I shared with Hisashi instead …" The mention of Hisashi lead to an awkward pause. I wasn't particularly happy with the mention of Hisashi myself; he had been my friend, yes, but he had also been the unintentional driving force for the tension between Takashi and Rei, and I didn't like that my friends had grown apart. The fact that it took the apocalypse to bring them back together was also kind of depressing to think about. "But … it doesn't matter any more. It's over. When everything's done and passed, all that's left is 'where we go from here.' "

"Uh, yeah …"

"Shizuka-sensei, I can't see anything," said Alice-chan, who was having her eyes covered by Marikawa-sensei.

"Oh my, I'm sorry," said Marikawa-sensei, removing her hands from over Alice-chan's eyes.

Alice-chan glared at her with an adorable pout on her face. Then her eyes widened as if she was remembering something. "Sensei, weren't you going to make a call?" she asked.

"Right!" said Marikawa-sensei, gasping. Her facial expression brightened considerably and when she spoke, her tone was fast and excited. "Komuro-kun, your cell phone! Cell phone, please!" Takashi handed her his phone. "Let's see, there's the one. Two is here and three is there …"

"Should I dial it for you?" Kouta asked in a deadpan.

"No interrupting," said Marikawa-sensei. "You'll make me forget." She dialled the number and held the phone to her ear. "RIKA! YOU'RE ALIVE!" she exclaimed in joy after a few moments. "I'm alive, too, though we've been through hell …"

It was good to know that the woman we had to thank for our ability to fight was alive. While I couldn't hear what she was saying, Marikawa-sensei's responses gave me a general idea.

"That place has been lost! Oh … but we borrowed some guns …" A pause while her friend spoke, and—

_BANG!_

The sound of a massive explosion resounded from … everywhere, it sounded like. There was a bright flash in the sky that looked like it was miles away, and yet the explosion reached us clear as day. There was a thin trail of smoke rising up from the phone.

"Huh?" Marikawa-sensei asked in confusion. "Hello? Hello, Rika?"

There was no answer.

"… Huh?" Marikawa-sensei looked at the smoking phone in her hand. "It's dead."

None of us said a word. The silence was grim. We all knew something was very wrong, because it wasn't only the phone. What few electrical appliances we could see from where we were standing were all dead. Nothing was working.

Marikawa-sensei laughed sheepishly as she held out the smoking phone. "Komuro-kun … your cell phone … it broke," she said. "Or _I _might have broken it. I'm sorry."

Takashi sighed and took his phone back from her.

"Well, let's face it, the phone hasn't been much use to us so far, anyway," I said in a small attempt at comfort. If the look Takashi was giving me was any indication, however, it wasn't working. "What? Not helping?" Takashi continued to stare at me. "I'll shut up now …"

"I wonder …" I heard Saya-san mutter under her breath.

A little way away from us, one of the drivers who was going to be driving the buses when everyone left struggled to start the bus. He was being very loud about it, too, so we could all hear him.

"Somebody! Please help me!" a woman screamed from not far away. "I think my husband's having a heart attack! His pace-maker just died!"

"This couldn't be worse timing …" Saya-san muttered.

"What is it, Saya-san?" asked Kouta. He was now holding his sniper rifle out in front of him, and I didn't blame him one bit. The atmosphere at the moment was tense at best.

"None of your business!" said Saya-san. "Just keep a lookout!" She looked over at Rei. "Miyamoto! Look through your gun's dot sight!"

"Huh? Why?" asked Rei.

"Just look through it! Do you see the dot?"

Rei raised her gun and looked through the sight, aiming it directly at Saya-san, who jumped out of the way in slight panic. "Uh … I don't see it …" Rei said in confusion.

"Dad!" Saya-san yelled. "We have to change our plans! What we've got on our hands right now is—"

"THEY'RE HEEEEEERE!" cried a shrill voice from near the front gate. A man was outside, running toward the gate to get into the estate, and he was clearly exhausted, as even though he was running, there was a _huge _horde of zombies hot on his heels. "_Stay back_!" He was barely managing to keep ahead now. "STAY BACK!" He was barely through the gate when a zombie grabbed his arm. It dragged him back and dug its teeth into his shoulder, spraying his blood all over its face. It didn't even take a moment for the other zombies to join the feast, and before long the poor man's cries stopped entirely.

"CLOSE THE GATES!" Chief Takagi shouted at his men. "HURRY! All guards gather here! Don't let the corpses in!"

"Sir! What about all our men still out there?" one of the guards asked.

Chief Takagi unsheathed the sword at his hip and held it in a combat position. "If we don't close them now, we'll lose _everything_!" he said. "Do it!"

The man took a remote out of his pocket that was probably to control the gate. He pressed a button … but nothing happened. "The remote is malfunctioning!? Somebody close the gates manually!"

Two men ran to do just that. One stood on either side of the gate, and the two of them heaved it closed, crushing a zombie against the wall as they just barely managed to get it closed on time. Due to the crushed zombie, however, they were unable to close it all the way. The men pushed the gate as hard as they physically could, but it would not budge. They continued to push, but as they finally managed to get the gate closed, one single zombie managed to slip through the small gap where the other zombie was being crushed. It looked like it had lost a fair amount of flesh in doing so, but it had gotten through very much alive.

"_One of them got in_!" a man shouted in panic.

"W-What are you doing?" the woman who had lead the protesters asked Kouta. "You've got a gun, so kill it!"

"Oh, singing a different tune now, aren't you?" I asked her, glaring. "Do you have any idea how hypocritical you are? Seriously, shut the fuck up and let the 'violence-loving kids' save your sorry ass." _Jesus Christ … _I thought to myself. _Of all the people to have survived, why did it have to be one of those people who just look for shit to argue with?_

"In my pocket …" Kouta muttered as he looked down the scope of his sniper rifle. "_I've got one …_" He fired his sniper rifle, punching a clean hole in the zombie's head, and it fell to the ground.

"Sorry, kid, I was wrong about you," said one of the men who had been harassing him earlier.

Kouta grinned proudly, shouldered his gun, and stuck his thumb up at the man. "I told ya I was the best!" he said.

"Sir! Madam! We've brought your things!" said one of the Takagis' men. He handed a briefcase to Mrs Takagi, who opened it up and took out an SMG in parts. She assembled it on the spot, as if she'd done it many times before, and used a strap to keep it held above her shoulder. She then grabbed the bottom of one side of her red dress and ripped it up to the knee.

Saya-san had to cover Kouta's eyes to stop him from openly ogling her mother.

"I'm all ready," Mrs Takagi said to her husband, who was looking toward the failing gates, his sword still drawn. "And you, Souichiro-san?"

"Ha!" Chief Takagi laughed once, though there was no smile on his face. "I have no need for a gun!"

Mrs Takagi smiled at him. "Of course," she said. She turned and approached Saya-san with an old fashioned gun in her hands. "Use this, Saya-chan."

"A … a Luger POB, with stock and drum magazine," said Kouta upon recognising the gun.

"But I don't know how to use this!" said Saya-san. "Why are you carrying a gun, anyway, mum!?"

Mrs Takagi chuckled a little. "Back when I worked on Wall Street, I took a course in executive self defence," she said. "I might even be a better shot than your father." She turned to Kouta. "You'll teach her how to use it, won't you, Hirano-kun?"

A huge grin broke out on Kouta's face, and he waved an arm in the air in happiness. "Yes! _Yes_! _YEEES_!" he exclaimed in joy.

The zombies outside the gate were still pushing to get in, and the men holding the gate closed looked to be tiring.

"I think we've all lost track of something," I said. I had been curious about it since it happened, and even with the threat of the zombies breaking in, I was surprised that everyone else seemed to be ignoring it. "The cars and phones, and all the electronic shit. Why did it all stop working?"

"It was … right after that strange light," said Takashi.

"It was an EMP attack!" said Saya-san. For once it seemed like her loud voice wasn't supposed to sound irritated; rather, she was trying to make herself heard above the growing panic. "A HANE … also known as a High Altitude Nuclear Explosion. When a nuclear bomb is detonated in the upper stratum of the atmosphere, the gamma rays expel electrons from the atmospheric particles, causing a compton scattering. The electrons affix themselves to Earth's magnetic field, generating an electromagnetic pulse emitted over a wide area. As a result, electrical appliances and whatnot are stopped cold! The electromagnetic pulse fries all integrated circuits!"

"So you're saying that right now we're …" said Saeko-san.

"That's right," said Saya-san, nodding. "We can't use _anything _electrical!"

"Then we can't use our cell phones any more?" asked Rei.

The noise of the zombies at the gate was somehow even louder than any of the people panicking.

"Not just cell phones, but computers, too!" said Saya-san. "None of our vehicles that rely on electrical controls will work, either, nor will any of the power plants. If we'd had a plan on how to deal with an EMP, it'd be a different story. But … only small groups of the special defence force and political system probably have."

"So we can't drive any more …" I said with a sigh. "Shit. This just got a whole lot harder … and I didn't even think that'd be possible at this stage."

"Is there no way to fix it?" asked Chief Takagi.

"If we changed out the fried components, the cars might work," said Saya-san. "There's also a chance that certain vehicles that weren't affected by electric waves … and of course all vintage cars would work."

"Determine the damage at once," Chief Takagi ordered his men, who immediately jumped to do what they were told. "Saya!"

"Uh, what?"

"I commend you for so calmly assessing the situation in the middle of this turmoil."

Saya-san's mouth dropped open as if this were the first piece of praise she had ever received from her father … and, thinking about it, I highly suspected that it was.

Any further conversation was prevented when the noises at the gate got even worse. The number of zombies at the gate was now at the very least in the hundreds, but it looked more like thousands. They were pushing against the gate; the ones further behind were pushing the ones in front further and further into the gate, crushing them against it. One thing that I couldn't help but notice was that the gate was now shaking on its hinges.

_Well, shit … _I thought, knowing the gate wasn't going to hold.

Only a few moments after the thought went through my mind, the gate came loose from the walls, falling down with an almighty _crash! _Barely a second after that, the legions of the living dead poured in through the breach. The poor bastards who had been trying to hold the gate were the first to go. The next in their murderous path were all the civilians.

I am genuinely ashamed to admit that I got a little sadistic pleasure watching the ringleader of the protesters go down.

"Honey …" Mrs Takagi began to say.

"Dad! Let's barricade the house!" Saya-san yelled frantically.

"What good will that do!?" Chief Takagi asked. "They broke through our iron gate! If we sought refuge in the house, they'd break in and devour us!"

"Sir!" called a man who was running over to us. "I checked the area from the second storey! Those stationed in the next house over haven't been attacked yet! We could still reinforce the gate!"

"It's more important to break through the enemy and get to the next building!" said Chief Takagi. "All men and those willing to fight, gather around! Those with children and who want to survive, stay in the back!" He turned to us and regarded Takashi. "What happened to your felial piety, Komuro-kun!? Don't hesitate to take your own path!"

Takashi's expression was hard, but the tone of his voice betrayed his hesitation. "… Yes, sir," he said.

"Hirano-kun," Chief Takagi said to Kouta. "… Protect my daughter."

"Dad!" Saya-san practically cried, though her face wore her usual angry expression. "What are you saying!?"

One thing that I don't think any of us were expecting was Mrs Takagi slapping her daughter across the face. The noise rang out, stunning us all into silence.

"Mum …" Saya-san said, bringing a hand up to her cheek.

I winced in sympathy. I knew what a smack across the face from a parent felt like, but I sincerely doubted that this was like all the times it had happened to me.

"Souichiro-san and I have a duty to fulfil, Saya-chan," said Mrs Takagi. "It's up to us as your parents to leave you Hirano-kun and Komuro-kun! We already feel guilty enough as it is! Please don't make us suffer any more! Now _go_!"

We all nodded grimly. I was fully prepared to make a run for it, though it wasn't like I liked the circumstances.

"Auntie …" said Alice-chan, staring up at Mrs Takagi in confusion.

Mrs Takagi smiled, leaned down, and gave Alice-chan a hug. "That's a good girl …" she said in a soft tone I had never heard her use. "Auntie's daughter is a good girl, too. You listen to what everyone tells you, okay?" She broke the hug with Alice-chan, who ran over to Marikawa-sensei, hugging Zeke in her arms like she would immediately lose him if she let go.

"Dad! Mum!" Saya-san yelled. Both of her parents looked at her. "I love you!"

And with those words of farewell, we all ran in the direction of Matsudo-san's workshop, the only source of vehicles in this entire place now. The chances of anything working were slim, but it was the best chance we had.

Behind us, small explosions began to ring out as the Takagis' men started throwing dynamite.

"But … wouldn't it be better if we got away with everyone else?" asked Marikawa-sensei as we ran. "With all those high walls, it'd be hard to climb over."

"Don't you get why Matsudo-san's been meddling with engines?" Saya-san asked her.

I thought about it, and Matsudo-san's words rang out through my head.

_They actually cancelled these things midway through production, so this is the released military model. It's way more solid than the civilian model._

If the military model had the enhancements needed to survive an EMP blast, then escaping the estate would be a hell of a lot easier.

"I've checked it ten times over, but it's still sturdy as ever," Matsudo-san said as we all crowded around the ATV. "The electron fuel jet device and battery cables were also coated. It's good to go!"

"That Humvee was also military issue," said Marikawa-sensei.

"It's no good," said Kouta. "They didn't prepare for something like this, so its EMP measures were cancelled."

We all clambered into the ATV … well, everyone except for Matsudo-san, that is.

"Uh … what about you, Matsudo-san?" asked Takashi.

"Yeah, come on, man," I said, slapping the side of the ATV. "Didn't you wanna take this thing for a spin? You did a hell of a good job on it."

Matsudo-san chuckled. "Sure, it's a bummer, but …" He held up his wrench, a smile firmly plastered on his face. "My true love is here, and I ain't leaving her!" Marikawa-sensei revved the engine of the ATV, signifying that it was good to go. "Lady Saya," he bowed in respect, "please take care!"

"Always do!" Saya-san said with an uncharacteristic grin on her face.

"Try not to die, you magnificent son of a bitch!" I called to him just before we started driving away.

We had to drive through all the blood, fighting, and carnage on our way out, but we got out almost completely unscathed. We all knew where we were going, and our determination to get there was unbreakable. Despite all the chaos and carnage around us, we were going to see this shit through to the end. We were never going to let those undead bastards get the better of us.

Our next stop was the East Police Station, to look for Rei's parents.

And as many complications as there were before we got there, none of us ever doubted for a single moment that we would get there alive.

* * *

**And the Takagi Estate has fallen! That, Constant Readers, marks the end of my editing for this story, and you can expect the new chapter to be out within a week or two. (I _promise _that's all it'll take; I've been trying to write chapters more quickly as of late.) I'm so sorry you guys have had to wait so long for me to carry on with this, and I'm even more sorry that after I upload the next chapter whether or not this gets updated more frequently depends on the results of the poll on my profile, but I'm trying to spend more of my free time writing now, so I should get a lot more done.**

**Now, this is around where I started answering reviews last time, so I'm gonna put the responses for both of the edited chapters below. Yep, there are two review answer sections in this one.**

**Review Answers Part One**

**xbox432: **Yeah, Shidou's a bastard. I agree; the mob mentality the characters in _HOTD _exhibit is one of the more interesting aspects of it, a perfect example of humans following anyone who can provide answers, no matter how insane they appear to be.

**deltafrost: **I've actually decided to just carry on with the main characters. After a long wait, I don't think people would want to read something that is being copied directly from the manga. Rika will see Paul eventually, but due to the butt-fuckingly long hiatus the manga has been on, the circumstances of that will be made up entirely by me.

**war sage: **Thank you, and who doesn't? Unless they're some kind of perverted, power hungry psycho.

**Panzer4life: **Sorry, but I've never actually read any Tom Clancy (though I do really want to), the title was just the title of the chapter in the _HOTD _manga. Oh, don't worry, I'm thinking of a multitude of ways I can get rid of Shidou. Thank you for the compliments.

**Guest: **Thank you, and here's an update!

**frostchase101: **Yeah, I hope they update the manga, too. Preferably by the time I've completely caught up with it. Thank you. In terms of Shidou, I plan on following the manga quite well in that regard, but that's just so that I can get rid of him in a really creative way when I have to come up with my own storylines.

**Guest: **Well, what I plan on doing is getting to where the manga has stopped, and then working out my own way of finishing the story from there. I already have a story arc planned out in order to end it.

**Review Answers Part Two**

**Theboblinator: **Thank you. Sorry about that, but the manga doesn't have things last as long as the animé, but since I've started editing some of them together, the chapters are longer now. Yeah, I like to write more seriously than humorously, but if I can fit in funny moments then I'll definitely do so; I'm glad they turn out as funny as I hope they do. Well … let's just say that, unlike the animé, the Humvee isn't exactly available to them in the manga … and there really isn't much resistance against the zombies (seriously, they just tell the teenagers to get the hell out of dodge, and they do; it's a bit anticlimactic, really) … but you can look forward to the shrine scene next chapter, which I think is adequate comfort, don't you? XD The Mystery Machine joke jumped into my head as I was writing it; I've always thought Takashi's use of the phrase "the gang" was cheesy as hell, but that joke only occurred to me as I was writing it out. I'm actually quite proud of it.

**Al'Diabolos The Damned: **I can understand that. I'm still sort of shy about this site, and it takes a lot of willpower to upload (I actually sometimes sit and stare at the screen when a chapter is ready and don't upload it for about an hour afterwards … I get really nervous about this sort of thing). Thank you for your praise and compliments, they're much appreciated!

**frostchase101: **Thank you. And yes, the shrine scene is going to be a big moment between Paul and Saeko (the moment I plan on making their relationship official, as a matter of fact), and I am _really _looking forward to writing it out. I will certainly try.

**ELOSHAZZY: **Well, here it is!

**guest: **That's okay, I understand liking the story, but can you at least keep the reviews restricted to this story? It's not exactly helpful to get reviews on one story requesting updates for another story. Nevertheless, I appreciate the support, and don't think that I don't. Don't feel bad, I appreciate the enthusiasm, but you should probably just tone it down a little. Thank you.

**pyrojack25: **Yes, this story is following the manga. What exactly confuses you about it? Your confusion is confusing me … if that makes any sense at all.

**Guest: **Hmmm … you know, I like that idea. Maybe not a whole chapter, but a few flashback scenes scattered around wouldn't be so bad. Thanks for the idea, I appreciate it.

**And that's that for reviews. I can't even _begin _to tell you how excited I am to write the next chapter of this story. I've got it all written up in cliffnote form, and there's over a thousand words in notes alone. I'm combining two chapters of the manga for this, because considering how short they are, it's the only way I'm going to get out a decently long chapter. That, and if I kept them separate, I'd have to wait yet _another _chapter to get Paul and Saeko together, and I'm sure we're all tired of waiting. I hope you guys enjoy the next chapter as much as I'm sure to enjoy _writing _it.**

**See you then, Constant Readers!**


	11. Shrines and Secrets

**Well, Constant Readers, we've all been waiting for this chapter for a long time. I've been enthusiastic about writing this chapter ever since I started the story, and to finally get to writing it is a huge relief to me. There's gonna be a lot of pay-off and development this chapter, and I really hope all of you enjoy this as much as I'm sure to.**

**For those of you who aren't aware, I've been back and edited everything into the first person. There are occasional lapses into the third person, but only when I need to show things from a perspective other than Paul's. There have been a few changes to the storyline, most notably in terms of the development of relationships, and while it's not essential that you read the changes, it is recommended. I apologise to those of you who reviewed the original chapter 11, as I've combined chapters in order to extend the length of certain chapters – I apologise for this because those of you who reviewed the original chapter 11 will not be able to review the new one. This does not apply to Guests, of course, so if you want to review as a Guest and just set your name as that of your username (as I have done on a couple of occasions), then you should be able to review fine.**

**I hope you enjoy this most anticipated chapter, Constant Readers.**

**Let's begin.**

* * *

Shrines and Secrets

As we drove on, I noticed that the sound of the exploding dynamite combined with the new sounds of gunfire from the Takagi Estate were causing all the zombies to basically ignore the ATV as it drove past them. We made if off the grounds of the estate and onto a road, specifically the road that the initial wave of zombies attacking the estate had come from. It all seemed to be going well until we came upon the half-open blockade in the road. The school bus that Shidou and his students were in was there, crashed into the side of the blockade that wasn't open, looking pretty dead.

"That's the only way out," said Saeko-san.

I looked at the way Marikawa-sensei was driving, and with the way she was going, there was no way we were going to get through that gap. She was being too cautious, trying not to hit the wall of the blockade on the way past, but the only way we were going to get through was if the ATV scraped the walls – the gap was too narrow for anything else.

Takashi seemed to see this, too. "Got it!" he said, jumping to the front of the ATV and pushing Marikawa-sensei away.

"Komuro-kun!" Marikawa-sensei said in shock.

Takashi kept the ATV on a straight forward path. If he was off by even a centimetre, we would crash into the wall and get stuck in the gap. I found myself tensing. The adrenaline rushing through my veins by this point was nowhere near enough to take away the nervousness I felt, the feeling that we might not make it through. To my immense relief, however, the sound of scraping on the sides of the ATV reached my ears, and though we slowed slightly, the vehicle pushed its way through the gap without trouble. I felt a grin tug at the corners of my mouth.

I briefly noticed a bunch of Shidou's students fleeing the scene, some being eaten by the zombies. I saw no sign of the man himself, though.

_Fuck 'em, _I thought. _They made their beds, now they can fucking lie in them._

"We should be okay now …" said Saya-san.

"For a while, anyway," I said, not even really noticing that I was speaking out loud.

There was a rather awkward silence for quite a while.

"Ah!" Rei said suddenly, as if realising something.

"_Please don't say anything_!" Saya-san said to her loudly. "_Please_!"

_Oh … _I thought. _That's right … _In all the commotion, all the excitement of escaping with our lives, I had completely forgotten that Saya-san had essentially left her parents to their deaths back there. They had practically ordered her to, granted, but I sincerely doubted that made it feel any better. Once again I found myself in a situation I had no idea what to do in. I would never have felt sorry if my father had died. Hell, I _hoped _he was dead, as horrible as that sounded. I had no idea what loving a parent was like, so I had no understanding of what Saya-san was going through in regards to leaving hers behind. I would have felt depressed about it, but not understanding the feelings of others was starting to become a normal occurrence for me.

"_Takagi-san_!" Kouta said suddenly. "_Please keep a tight lookout_!"

"_Hirano, you …_" Rei started to say in a warning tone.

"Fine!" said Saya-san. "Fine. Hirano's … Kouta's right!"

Then things descended into silence again.

"I know you don't want anyone to say anything," I said to Saya-san, who looked at me with a little irritation. "But, for what it's worth, I'm sorry. I can't say I understand what you're feeling, but I know it can't be easy. We're all here for you if you need us."

She seemed to think for a few moments, then sent a barely visible nod my way. "Thank you," she said.

I nodded back, but said nothing more.

There was more silence, but this one was less uncomfortable. Takashi just continued to drive the ATV through the streets. There were still a lot of zombies, but they were spaced out, so it was a simple matter to drive through without hitting any. I would have called it almost peaceful if it weren't for the constant presence of the undead moaning.

"Now what do we do!?" asked Marikawa-sensei.

"Sorry, but we're going to look for Rei's and my parents!" said Takashi. "First we're going to the Eastern Police Station, then Shintoko Third Elementary School! If we keep going at this rate, it shouldn't take two hours!"

Normally I would find that hard to believe. Looking at how fast the ATV could go, though, I fully believed we could get done that quickly.

"Then …" Takashi continued, "… we go to your friend, Sensei!" He seemed to check something. "We'll be reaching the highway soon!"

He was right about that, too. Barely a minute later, we were turning a corner to get onto the highway just by the river. It was after we turned that corner, however, that we saw that driving down this road was going to be a _lot _more difficult than any of the driving we'd done before. There were more zombies, all heading in the direction of the Takagi Estate, and there were _loads _of them. It was like every zombie in the city had decided to head in this direction all at once, and that made things a _lot _more complicated.

"… There's so many …" Alice-chan whispered out, accompanied by a few whimpers from Zeke.

"_What do we do now …_?" Takashi asked in a hiss, stopping the ATV before we could hit the large horde.

"No duh!" said Saya-san. It would appear she had regained the cocky attitude that came with her massive intelligence.

"What makes you say that, Takagi-san?" asked Kouta.

"You really have no abilities besides firing guns," Saya-san said to him. "Fatty! 'They' react to noise! The EMP attack removed all the loud noises from town that people and their technology make! Then my dad set off a stick of dynamite. _And now this buggy's engine is making a ruckus, too_! It's probably the only engine in this whole town!"

"I get it," said Saeko-san. "… But the problem right now is how we get through this place."

"This thing works on both land and water, right?" asked Rei. "That's what you said, isn't it Paul?" I nodded. " 'They' won't follow us into the water!"

"Matsudo-san said it might not float with too many people on it," I said, sighing. "It's like a plane in that way. Yeah, a plane is perfectly capable of flying, but too much weight will drag it down; it's why they have a weight limit for luggage. The same principle applies here: there are too many of us, so if we try to drive on the water, the ATV will just sink."

"So we force our way through again?" asked Marikawa-sensei.

"There are too many of 'them'," said Takashi.

"Then …" said Rei. "_What are you proposing we do_!?"

I already had an idea of what to do. It was crazy by all accounts, and it would lead to one of us – preferably me – being separated from the rest of the group. The plan itself was dangerous, more so for the one going off on their own than the rest of the group, but I thought it would be worth it …

"I've got an idea," I said. Everyone looked at me, curious. For once the attention didn't disturb me, and I went on talking as normal. "The sound of the buggy is what's drawing them to us, right? So if I take the ATV and drive off in another direction from the one we have planned, the rest of you could go on foot without worry. The sounds of the ATV combined with the movement of the zombies will mask basically any sounds you guys make whilst you're moving. Yeah, it'll be dangerous for all of us, but I'll be in the most danger. You guys just have to try and move quietly."

There was silence for a moment as everyone considered it. A few days ago, there may have been some arguments about the sanity of the plan, but by this point we had all become used to doing crazy things for the sake of survival.

"It could work," said Takashi, nodding. "There's just one problem: I should be the one to go."

Rei looked like she was about to protest, but I beat her to the punch. "No, Takashi," I said. "I wouldn't have suggested it if I wasn't willing to do it myself. It's my plan, I don't want to put someone else in danger if it fails. If I take the ATV, at least I know I'm the only one being followed."

"Paul, I really think—"

"I'm _not _arguing with you about this, Takashi. I'm doing it."

Takashi looked like he was about to argue again.

"He's made his choice," Saeko-san said to Takashi. "You should let him go." Takashi didn't look happy, but it seemed that he had run out of arguments. "And here's my choice: I'm going with you," she said to me.

My eyes widened in surprise. "Saeko-san, what are you—"

"Going off on your own would be practically suicide," she said to me. "At least with the two of us we can watch each other's backs."

As much as I really wanted to, I couldn't argue with her logic. It made perfect sense. And, despite the situation, the thought of spending time alone with Saeko-san was very appealing to me. "… Okay," I said, nodding. I looked at the others. "We'll meet up at Taiei Shopping Town. It's only about an hour or so down the road, but because we're going around it'll take us longer. Give us until this time tomorrow. If we're not there, just leave. If we get there and you're gone, we'll head to the police station ourselves."

I was really quite surprised by how well I had thought this out in the short amount of time I had.

"I don't really know this area well …" said Kouta.

"Don't worry," said Rei. "It's on the route me and Takashi used to take to get to elementary school."

"It should be easy for you," I said. "If all the zombies are drawn by the buggy like we want them to be, they'll be following the noise. You guys should have a straight shot to the mall if you're quiet enough."

"You sure about this, Paul?" Takashi asked me.

"Yeah," I said, nodding. "You guys head to the side of the road. I'll switch the engine back on and rev it a few times to get their attention before we drive off."

They all gave varying words of assent and began to exit the buggy. All except one …

"Paul-chan … Miss Saeko …" Alice-chan muttered, looking at me with tears in her eyes.

I smiled down at her tenderly. "Don't worry about us, Alice-chan," I said. "Me and Saeko-san will be back with you guys tomorrow. Trust me, okay? I promise we'll be back."

She was quiet for a few moments. "… Okay," she said.

I smiled at her and patted her on the head, causing her to giggle lightly. I also patted Zeke, who barked in appreciation. Alice-chan got out of the ATV and immediately latched herself onto Marikawa-sensei once again. I nodded at the others and climbed into the driver's seat of the ATV. Saeko-san was stood up in the buggy, curiously enough, but I ignored it. I turned on the engine and revved it a few times, drawing the zombies toward me. The others had started moving by this point, sticking to the very edges of the road. I kept revving the engine until the zombies were relatively close, then prepared to drive off.

"… You think we attracted too many of 'them'?" asked Saeko-san. The crowd of zombies only seemed to have grown larger since I'd started revving the engine.

"Well, that _was _the idea," I said, shrugging.

She laughed. "You like to take the most dangerous actions, don't you, Paul-kun?" she asked.

"I try." I grinned.

"You think we should get going? I'm ready whenever you are."

"Well, then, let's not waste time."

I put the ATV in motion and, in what most would call an absolutely insane action, started to drive down the riverbank. My hope was that it would work in the way Rei had thought it would: they wouldn't be able to follow me down the slope of the riverbank. And my hopes were answered, in a sense. The zombies, in an attempt to follow us down the slope, fell and rolled down. It wasn't clean rolling, so I thought that at least a few of them might crack their heads as they went down.

"You know what's weird?" I asked suddenly. "These things are blind, yet they can navigate stairs perfectly. But a _slope _is too much for them."

Saeko-san's eyes narrowed. "Regardless …" she said.

I looked back at where the zombies had fallen and saw that we hadn't been as lucky as I'd hoped we'd be. The zombies that tumbled down the slopes got up just fine, and since the ATV's engine was still running, they were heading right toward us.

I groaned. "Things can never be easy for us, can they?" I asked rhetorically. I once again thought about what Rei had said earlier, and another idea occurred to me. "Okay, hang on," I said warningly, then started driving the ATV again.

We hit the water with a splash and, as expected, the ATV stayed above the water perfectly … though a surprised cry from Saeko-san got me to turn my head in concern, and …

… I froze up, my mouth agape. Our landing in the water had done two things to Saeko-san: knocked her into a seat since she had still been standing up, and soaking her through since the splash had gone right over my head. Now, the top half of her uniform was white, which, due to the amount of water that had hit her, meant I could see _right through _her shirt. The bra she wore underneath was black and rather lacy, which came as a bit of a surprise. My mind went into a daze for a few moments, my eyes transfixed on the sight before me.

"Uh …" The sounds coming out of my wide open mouth weren't exactly of the intelligent variety.

Saeko-san's face suddenly went redder than I even thought possible for a human. She immediately brought her arms and legs up to cover her chest area. "You don't have to stare, you know!" she exclaimed.

My head snapped back around to look out the front of the ATV. "Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry!" I kept saying frantically. I hadn't meant to stare, but I had seen her and my mind had gone completely blank.

After driving for a little while more, the feeling of awkwardness left me. I had no intention of turning my head again in case said feeling came back, but I had noticed that the zombies, for some reason, really _weren't _following us into the water. Maybe they could hear the buggy disturbing the water or something like that, but for some reason they merely pointed their heads in our direction and never tried to follow.

With the threat of the zombies clearly gone, I slowed the ATV somewhat, relaxing back into my chair and sighing to myself in relief.

"_Come on, you can't be that tired already, can you_?" Saeko-san's voice whispered surprisingly sensually into my ear.

"No, no, I'm fine!" I said quickly, glancing to the side where her voice had come from, seeing that she had her face _right next _to mine. S-Saeko-san, you're … oh, _wow_, you're close right now …" My face was red, my voice was shaky, and I was struggling to think straight.

She put a gloved finger to her lips as if to shush me. "Don't you think we should try to keep it down for a while?" she asked.

I breathed out another sigh, this one to calm me down. "Okay," I said, trying to ignore the close proximity between Saeko-san and myself. I continued to drive slowly down the river for a while, then I saw a small mass of land in the middle of it. I recognised what it was immediately – it was a sandbar. An idea occurred to me. "We could use a rest. Why not stop at the sandbar for a while?"

"All right, then," she said.

I drove us over and parked the ATV on the small, sandy beach that surrounded the small sandbar. It was only then that I really noticed the orange colour of the sky. We had been driving for a lot longer than I had realised. I got out of the ATV to stretch my legs, and Saeko-san got out, too, though she chose to simply sit on the front of the buggy.

"We should take turns keeping watch," I said. "I splashed you when we went into the river, so I'll go first. Think of it as an official apology."

"_Achoo_!"

The sound of Saeko-san sneezing made me turn around to look at her. It was only then that I noticed she was still soaked from when we had landed in the river.

"S-Sorry," she said. "I guess I caught a little chill. But I didn't have time to bring a change of clothes, so …"

"Hang on," I said. I looked in the buggy and saw what I was looking for. It was a small bag. I rummaged through it and found what I was looking for: a black vest. "I think Takashi or Rei must've thrown some stuff in here before the shit hit the fan back there. For the trip we planned before, you know. It's not much, but it's something." I handed her the vest, smiling. "It should help."

She took the vest and smiled at me. "Thank you."

I turned away, both out of politeness and to keep watch. The temptation to turn around and look was there, but I didn't want to be rude or inconsiderate, so I resisted.

"I'm all done," she said, and I turned back around.

I froze up again. The vest was an _incredibly_ tight fit. It hugged her body in all the right places, and I could see the curves of her body like it was an extra layer of skin. The vest combined with the torn skirt and black leggings was almost as unintentionally erotic as the apron and thong had been back at Marikawa-sensei's friend's place. She had tied her hair up in a ponytail, too, probably to keep the water from dripping down her back.

"What?" she asked me, smirking. "What is it? Do I look funny?"

"No, no!" I said quickly. "You, er, you look _great_, actually. Really fantastic."

She chuckled. "I always catch you looking at me like that," she said.

"Oh, uh …" I was unsure of how to respond. "Sorry?"

"It's all right. After all, I am a girl, and sometimes I like being looked at like that."

_That _caught me off guard. Of all the things she could have said to me, that's the one I would have expected the least. I had no chance to think straight again before the next words came tumbling out of my mouth. "What about you? Have you ever been interested in anyone?" I mentally slapped myself almost immediately. "Y-You don't have to answer that. It's just, a girl like you could get any guy you want, so I just figured there had to have been someone at some point … and I'm just gonna shut up now …"

The silence that descended after that was one of the most awkward silences I've ever had to sit through.

"I did," Saeko-san said after a while. I looked at her inquisitively. "… There was a boy I liked."

"Oh …" I said, and that was all. I felt a sudden wave of sadness come over me, but mentally berated myself for it almost immediately. I had asked the damn question, so being upset by the answer was pointless and stupid.

I didn't know why I had expected anything else.

* * *

We drove through the streets relatively quickly. We had stayed at the sandbar just long enough for Saeko-san to get dried off and dressed back into her shirt, then we had left. We were in the road again now, and while we had seen a few zombies, there weren't nearly as many as there had been back on the other road. The noise the ATV was making was still enough to draw them in, though.

"It'll be just like before we escaped to the sandbar!" said Saeko-san.

"It's getting dark, so we should find a place to spend the night," I said. "I've got a plan for drawing the zombies away from us, but we've got to get somewhere first. It should be just around the next corner!"

I turned the ATV around the corner and the sight of a children's play area came into view.

"The park?" Saeko-san asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Don't worry, this isn't where we're staying," I said. I drove the ATV a little faster so that we wouldn't crash into what I was driving into. The speed we picked up was just enough to drive over the small wall surrounding the fountain at the centre of the park. Unfortunately for Saeko-san, the landing in the water once again caused a splash, though this one was nowhere near as large as the one that had occurred when we landed in the river.

"Jesus, do you _like _getting me wet or something?" she asked heatedly.

I smirked. "Phrasing, Saeko-san, phrasing," I said. I turned around and saw that she was faintly blushing, which made me smirk. "There should be some tape in that bag there. Hand me some, would you?" She did so, and I used the tape to hold the handle in place while the engine was running, making the ATV drive in a circle inside the fountain. The two of us got out of the ATV, and Saeko-san looked at me, impressed.

"You're using the sound of the buggy to draw them here," she said, nodding.

I nodded. "The fastest way out of here is the east exit," I said. "Try to be as quiet as possible. We don't wanna draw to many of them to us, otherwise doing this with the buggy is useless."

"I see …" she said. "Understood." She immediately unsheathed her sword and decapitated a zombie that had been getting too close.

I readied my crossbow, took an arrow from my quiver, and shot it into the nearest zombie. Because the zombies were relatively spread out, I had time to retrieve the arrow from the zombie's head and reuse it. I stopped fighting them relatively quickly when I saw just how efficiently Saeko-san was decimating the zombies that were being drawn toward us. Decimating isn't even an adequate word – it was a _slaughter_.

Then a group of zombie children came up behind Saeko-san, she turned around to slash at them with her sword … and froze up. Her eyes went wide and she just stood there, shaking.

"Saeko-san?" I said, confused. No movement. "Saeko-san!" Still no movement. "_What are you doing_!?"

She looked at me, seemingly trying to say something, but she couldn't.

The zombie children were dangerously close to her. Putting aside my confusion, I ran forward, pulling Saeko-san out of the way, and put an arrow right into the forehead of one of the small zombies. I was about to try and take out the others, too, but then I noticed that the zombies were coming into the park from every entrance due to the noise. Panicking, I just grabbed Saeko-san's hand and ran out of the east exit, pulling her along with me. She still wasn't saying anything.

"_Shit_!" I cursed loudly. After running down the street some, I saw that my plan to leave the ATV spinning in the fountain had also fucked us over somewhat. There were zombies all over the street now. "What to do … what to do …" I darted my eyes around, my hand still firmly gasping Saeko-san's. Eventually my eyes landed on a shrine. It wasn't near the street, but at the top of a nearby hill. "That'll work."

I pulled Saeko-san along with me as I carefully manoeuvred my way through the zombies in the street. After running up the stairs that were built into the hill, I pulled Saeko-san into the shrine, finally let go of her hand, and closed the door behind me. I took a few seconds to catch my breath before turning back to Saeko-san, who as sitting down.

"Saeko-san, what's wrong?" I asked. I got no response, and something was telling me that I wouldn't be getting one for quite a while. I sighed.

Instead of just waiting around for a conversation that could take hours to start, I went about making sure our temporary shelter for the night was as defensible as it could be.

* * *

"We'll stay here tonight," I said as I lit some candles in the middle of the room. It was pitch black outside, far too dangerous to go anywhere. "We'll move out again in the morning. The noise should've drawn them all off the streets by then."

"Aren't you going to ask me anything?" Saeko-san asked suddenly.

I paused for a moment, thinking. "I shouldn't," I said carefully. "You clearly have reasons for acting the way you did, but those are none of my business. If you want to tell me, you will. That's what I've always found in people."

"You need to hear this," she said. "Will you please listen to what I have to say?"

"Of course," I said, then a smile tugged the corners of my mouth. "But come warm up by the candles first. You'll catch another chill sitting over there by yourself." She did as I said and came over to sit by the candles. "Oh yeah …" I picked up a small, square inflatable that, after reading the instructions on the side, I had discovered actually got a lot bigger. "I think this is a porta-potty or something. Just in case one of us needs to 'take care of business,' you know."

She started laughing at that, which hadn't been my intention – I was being fully serious about it – but I was glad to have cheered her up, if only slightly.

"I'm being serious," I said, though I found myself laughing a little, as well.

Then things went silent again.

"My memories came back to me," Saeko-san said after a while. "Memories of _fear_."

"Was it because of the zombie kids?" I asked, my mind immediately jumping to the fact that she had seen them just before freezing up.

"… That wasn't it," she said. "Back in the sandbar, you asked me if there was somebody I liked."

"Um, yeah … sorry about that …"

"It's okay. I still want to live like a girl, so I can fall for boys. But … I've never told a crush how I felt about him. I don't think I have any right to ask someone out like that."

"That's ridiculous!" I said louder than I'd meant to, thoroughly baffled by what she was saying. "Why wouldn't you deserve something like that?"

"Need I remind you of how I've treated you for all three years we were in Fujimi Academy?" she asked me. Then she went silent, looking thoughtful. "… Even if I almost killed a man?"

My breath hitched in my throat out of surprise. I said nothing, though. I thought it would be best to simply listen.

"It was four years ago … I was attacked by a man on the road at night. Of course, I had my unbeatable wooden sword on me. I shattered the scapula and femur. When the police heard my story, they let me go home. I beat him within an inch of his life."

"That's it?" I asked, incredulous. "_He _attacked _you_. You shouldn't feel guilt over self defence, even if it did get a little out of hand."

"You didn't let me finish," she said. "The name of this man holds particular relevance to _you_. There was a court case over the whole incident, obviously, and it was only then that I learned the name of my attacker – Randall Blake."

It was like time had stopped for me after she said that. _Randall Blake_. That was the name of the man who had made my every waking moment in my early life hell. That was the name of my father. Suddenly this whole thing made more sense than I ever thought it would, and I realised that the old bastard had been responsible for the bad things in my life even after he went to prison.

"That's why I treated you the way I did," Saeko-san continued. "I always knew you didn't deserve it, but you … you look so much like him that it's scary. All the hatred I have for him was projected onto you, and you never deserved that."

"You don't need to feel bad," I said. "It's human nature to take out aggression on the closest thing you can find to the cause of the negativity if the cause is out of reach. And as for nearly killing him, don't feel bad about that either. That bastard attacked you, and trust me, he's had it coming for fucking _years_. You heard what I said back at the house."

"I never questioned whether or not he had it coming," she said. Her face twisted into that of distress and slight madness. "… I enjoyed it. It was sheer _joy _being faced with a real enemy for once! I already knew I had the upper hand with my wooden sword on me. So I feigned fear to elicit an attack from him … _then I didn't hesitate to retaliate_! I _enjoyed _it. It was pure _ecstasy _for me." She took a breath. "… That is the true nature behind Saeko Busujima. I don't even need a real reason to get intoxicated with power. Do you think I'd ever be allowed to bear the sincere heart of a young girl?"

"I don't blame you," I said again. "I quite enjoy that sort of thing, too."

"But you only got that way after all this started."

"No, I _didn't_," I said before she could speak again. Her eyes widened slightly. "The first time I met Kouta, when I saved him from those guys that were ganging up on him, I _didn't _do that out of the kindness of my heart, no matter how much I try to convince myself of that. I did it because I saw an _opportunity_. An opportunity to be the attacker rather than the victim for once. Honestly, I've _never _gotten more of a rush than I got beating the hell out of those three sons of bitches." I found myself breathing heavily, the feelings of superiority and adrenaline coming back as if it were all happening again.

And that's when I realised something.

Saeko-san … she was just as messed up and damaged as I was. She was even messed up in the same _way _that I was, though she seemed to be that way naturally whereas I had to go through years of abuse first. But that didn't matter. The point was that I had far more in common with the beautiful young woman sitting across from me than I ever thought I did. And as I stared into those gorgeous blue eyes, I knew on an instinctive level that the exact same thoughts were running through her head.

Time slowed to a crawl, and without even realising it I was getting closer to Saeko-san, and her to me. It felt like eternity, but when our lips came together it was like fireworks were going off inside my head. The soft moistness of her lips as they moved against my own in our loving, chaste kiss made my heart race in my chest. I just closed my eyes and enjoyed it.

When we separated again, we both breathed heavily, staring into each other's eyes with a certain intensity. I didn't even need to think about what I did next. I practically lunged forward and shoved my lips against hers, and she brought her hands up to the sides of my head, pulling me closer. I brought my hands to her hips and hugged her to me. The feeling of her clothed breasts pressing against my chest made my heart race even faster.

Saeko-san— _No, _I thought. _Just Saeko. _Saeko caught me by surprise when I felt her tongue brushing against my lips, asking permission to enter. I granted her request gladly, and our tongues began to fight a fierce battle for dominance, a battle that she quickly started to win.

I began to lightly push Saeko onto her back, still kissing her passionately. I rubbed her sides with my hands, wanting to place them in other places but not quite thinking it is a good idea this soon. We broke the kiss once in order to get air in our lungs, but we were back to it almost instantly.

Our kiss lasted a long time. We ended up falling asleep in each other's arms.

* * *

When we woke up the next morning, we spoke very little. We simply felt comfortable in each other's presence. We knew what we had to do and where we had to go, so we decided to leave early to get it all done as quickly as possible.

"We can get back on the road through the back," I said as we prepared to leave. "From where we are now, it should take us about twenty minutes to get to the mall."

We stepped out the back door of the shrine, and …

"What the _fuck_!?" I said loudly, so frustrated and confused that I really didn't care about the noise. It didn't matter, anyway. There was a large group of zombies approaching the shrine from the back. By all accounts, we were lucky we left when we did, otherwise we might have been trapped in there. "What the fuck attracted them _here_, the God damn _leaves_? Why aren't they headed to the park?" I raised my crossbow. "Okay, we need to make a break for it. Saeko, get ready to …"

And that's when I noticed it. Saeko had frozen up again, just like she had the day before.

"_Saeko_!" I shouted at her.

She gave no response.

Gritting my teeth, I did something I had never imagined myself doing before. I got behind her and wrapped an arm around her neck. It wasn't enough to choke, but just enough to make sure she couldn't move.

"_Paul _…" she gasped out in surprise.

"Just fucking listen to me," I said firmly. "My bastard of a father deserved _every single fucking hit _that you gave him! And you know what? Hearing you say you enjoyed it so much made me happier than you can believe, because that means you're at the very least as messed up as me, and I never thought I'd find someone like that! I've admired you for so long, Saeko, and damn it, I don't care if it seems too early to say something like this, but I _love _you, sadism and all! And if you plan on dying here, then book the train to hell for two, because I'll happily die _with _you!"

For a few moments I didn't even register the sounds the dead were making. All was quiet.

"Understood," Saeko said quietly. "You can let go now. I'm fine."

I released her from my grip and, almost immediately, she unsheathed her sword and charged forward. She took her sword to the zombies, chopping off heads where she could but not discriminating. Severed heads and other limbs flew everywhere. Zombies were chopped up in every way they could be chopped up, and it was an absolute _bloodbath_.

"It's almost too much!" Saeko yelled from within the carnage. There was definitely a note of bliss in her voice.

It took less than ten minutes in all. She had killed every single one of them in one of the bloodiest fights I had ever seen, and not one of them ever got the chance to lay so much as a hand on her.

"Holy shit …" I said. I was in awe of how many of them she had killed in so brutal a fashion … and even slightly aroused, to tell you the truth.

I shook that thought out of my head. Now really wasn't the time. "Come on," I said, walking forward. "Let's go."

"Paul," she said, and I turned back around to face her. She stood right in front of me, a small smile on her face. "You … you meant what you said, right?" She sounded oddly insecure.

I smiled at her. I placed a hand under her chin, lifted her head, and kissed her lightly on the lips. "Why would I lie?" I asked when we separated.

And from then on, all we had to do was walk. The zombies that came to the shrine seemed to be a lone group, because we encountered very few on the way to Taiei Shopping Town. As a matter of fact, there were so few that we were able to just walk there with no troubles.

When we finally reached the tall, imposing building that was the local mall, I had an arm around Saeko's shoulder and she had an arm around my waist.

Despite the end of the world, I was happy.

* * *

**Well, Constant Readers, it's been almost a year since you've seen a new chapter for this, so I am very happy to have finished this. I'm extraordinarily happy that I've finally written out this chapter because I've had the entire shrine sequence in my head since I started writing the story – hell, even _before _that, when I was merely in the planning stages. I do apologise if the events seem almost exactly like what happened in canon, but it was necessary to reach the really juicy part of the chapter. I did my best to have Paul make things as different as I could.**

**Now, this'll be the last you see of this story for a while. I'm going to work on another chapter of my _Persona _story after this, then I'm releasing a whole new story for _Sword Art Online_. I'm doing the editing for my stories, releasing a new chapter for each of them to show they're not dead, releasing a chapter of my _Persona _story since it's my main project, and then release a new story. When all the stories are edited and updated, and all the new stories are released, the results of the poll on my profile page will dictate what story I focus on alongside my _Persona _story, so please vote if you haven't already.**

**Once again, I apologise to those of you who can't review. I would suggest doing what I suggested in the beginning Author's Note.**

**See ya!**


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